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Building Resilience by Maturing Cybersecurity Capabilities Breadcrumb Home Insights Blog Building Cyber Resilience Through Cybersecurity Maturity May 22, 2026 This is the second blog post in our industry benchmarking blog series. Please see our first blog post on cybersecurity leadership in the age of AI here. In today’s fast-changing digital world, the threat landscape is constantly evolving. Organizations are encouraged to build security frameworks that are both robust and adaptable. Security leaders are now required to adopt growing compliance demands, counter increasingly sophisticated attacks and validate their security strategies to align with overall business objectives. The increasingly complex and evolving threat landscape makes it imperative for organizations to regularly evaluate and understand their position within the cybersecurity maturity spectrum. Reflecting on 2025, cybersecurity maturity is increasingly defined by an organization’s capacity to adapt, enhance and maintain security practices over time. Recent benchmarking across industries using the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) and Optiv’s Cybersecurity Peer Index (which measures maturity across six domains using a CMMI-based scale from Level 1 to Level 5) indicates that cybersecurity maturity progresses at different levels across different security domains. Analysis of aggregated maturity outcomes reveals several trends, and these insights provide a view of the current state of cybersecurity maturity across the industries and help define the path organizations should follow to achieve sustained and genuine resilience. Analysis of Industry Maturity Patterns Image Standardization Driving the Maturity Gap Between Average and Top Quartile Most organizations maintain maturity levels near CMMI Level 2 because their security processes are not yet fully formalized or consistently integrated across the organization. While policies may exist and security tools are in place, critical processes are often informal or applied unevenly. Often, organizations implement selected security practices but lack the formalized processes needed to assess, prioritize and address issues consistently and at scale. This highlights broader industry findings indicating gaps in documenting, testing and maintaining essential processes. In contrast, more mature organizations establish clear, well-documented processes that are regularly tested and continuously improved. Top-quartile organizations use structured evaluation methods, evidence-based decision-making, automation and consistent security standards to reduce risk. These practices help them respond to incidents quickly, minimize breaches and ensure business continuity. Strong maturity requires ongoing, disciplined application of effective strategies and this consistency also explains why certain industries perform more strongly than others. Regulated Industries Continue to Lead Regulated industries like Financial Services and Healthcare generally have greater cybersecurity maturity than unregulated industries like Consumer and Technology and Communications, mainly due to established governance, risk and compliance management practices. The same factors that separate average performers from top quartile organizations are often more consistently present in regulated industries. Compliance mandates, routine reporting and external audits drive improved governance, asset management and incident response. These requirements compel regulated organizations to fund and adopt core enterprise controls and ensure security practices are consistently reviewed and improved. While many organizations from unregulated industries excel at securing individual products or business units, extending the same level of security across the enterprise is often not achieved due to the lack of consistent user access management, credential maintenance, third-party oversight and uniform policy enforcement. Industry-specific factors such as narrow profit margins, variable demand, high turnover, third-party dependence and reliance on legacy systems often hinder cybersecurity investment. Key Focus Areas for Enhancing Cybersecurity Maturity Across Industries in 2025 Image Security Governance Is the Maturity Differentiator Image Industries with strong cybersecurity governance integrate it with decision-making and accountability processes. Healthcare and Financial Services, which are highly regulated, exhibit consistent governance through formal oversight and clear expectations. In Healthcare, evolving objectives and regulations drive access control, risk management, third-party monitoring and incident reporting. Financial Services face similar pressures, emphasizing resilience, transparency, executive accountability, timely disclosures and operational recovery. These outcomes are typically supported by governance practices that integrate cybersecurity into broader enterprise decision-making. Organizations with stronger maturity define risk tolerance, establish roles and responsibilities beyond technical teams, regularly review policies and manage third-party risks in a structured manner. For less regulated industries, strengthening these foundational practices remains essential to meeting evolving regulatory expectations, customer demands and market conditions. Detection Is Outpacing Response and Recovery Image Across most industries, capabilities for detecting potential threats tend to be more advanced than those for containment and recovery. This imbalance reflects years of investment in security tools that have progressed faster than the development of the people, processes and operational structures needed to act effectively on the information those tools provide. Organizations are generating more alerts and security event data, but their ability to respond to incidents and restore operations has not kept pace. As a result, security operations teams are often burdened by high alert volumes, and critical decisions are made under pressure due to limited preparation and coordination. True maturity requires more than the ability to identify threats; it also depends on the ability to contain incidents and restore operations within acceptable timeframes. Achieving this level of readiness requires deliberate investment in simulations, response rehearsals and validation of recovery objectives. It also depends on strong coordination across technical, operational, legal and leadership teams, so roles and actions are well understood and aligned before an incident occurs. Organizations that strengthen this connection between detection and action are better positioned to reduce disruption and limit financial impact. Future Outlook: Automation, AI and Cryptographic Inventories Are Guarding the Digital Horizon Through Awareness, Visibility and Implementation Our analysis suggests that advancing cybersecurity maturity is driven less by the adoption of discrete solutions and more by the scaled execution of repeatable, well-governed practices across identities, data and third-party ecosystems. Organizations should prioritize integrating automation and AI into their core governance and operating models to ensure outcomes can be measured. In line with broader industry shifts, organizations are increasingly leveraging automation and targeted AI capabilities to reduce alert fatigue, improve detection fidelity and accelerate response times. However, realizing these benefits requires disciplined operations, high-quality data and clearly defined accountability frameworks to mitigate risks introduced by automation. As such, organizations should invest in focused upskilling initiatives and targeted training to enable teams to effectively interpret, validate and oversee decisions made by automated systems. At the same time, the emergence of quantum computing is expected to materially impact existing cryptographic frameworks. Organizations should take a proactive stance by inventorying cryptographic assets, including keys, certificates, algorithms and dependencies, and defining a structured transition roadmap toward post-quantum cryptography. Looking ahead, sustained investment in automation, AI and robust cryptographic asset management will be critical to strengthening enterprise security postures. These capabilities will enhance control effectiveness, reduce exposure to unknown or unmanaged assets and processes and improve overall organizational resilience irrespective of current maturity levels. By: Jyothsna Chalasani Senior Practice Manager at Optiv Jyothsna Chalasani, Senior Practice Manager at Optiv, is a cybersecurity leader specializing in strategy and transformation, partnering with global organizations across industries to design, implement and evolve resilient security programs that meet industry best practices and adapt to shifting regulatory demands. By: Abhishek Kalavadiya Associate Consultant, Strategy and Risk Management | Optiv Abhishek Kalavadiya is a cybersecurity professional focused on cyber resilience and Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM). He supports organizations in identifying security gaps, evaluating control effectiveness, implementing risk mitigation strategies and TPRM program development aligned with industry’s best practices and standards. Share: Optiv Security: Secure greatness.® Optiv is the cyber advisory and solutions leader, delivering strategic and technical expertise to nearly 6,000 companies across every major industry. We partner with organizations to advise, deploy and operate complete cybersecurity programs from strategy and managed security services to risk, integration and technology solutions. With clients at the center of our unmatched ecosystem of people, products, partners and programs, we accelerate business progress like no other company can. At Optiv, we manage cyber risk so you can secure your full potential. For more information, visit www.optiv.com.
Optiv Security: Secure greatness.® Optiv is the cyber advisory and solutions leader, delivering strategic and technical expertise to nearly 6,000 companies across every major industry. We partner with organizations to advise, deploy and operate complete cybersecurity programs from strategy and managed security services to risk, integration and technology solutions. With clients at the center of our unmatched ecosystem of people, products, partners and programs, we accelerate business progress like no other company can. At Optiv, we manage cyber risk so you can secure your full potential. For more information, visit www.optiv.com.