Building Resilience and Advancing Cybersecurity Capability Maturity

August 21, 2025

In today’s digitally connected enterprises and ecosystems, cyber threats are evolving faster than ever, resulting in organizations facing constant pressure to build robust, adaptive and resilient security capabilities. As security leaders balance compliance requirements, threat attack surfaces and business priorities, understanding where they are on the maturity spectrum is critical.

While maturity may be different depending on the industry, size or business model of the organization, the underlying goal is shared by all – to move from reactive defense postures to proactive, intelligence-driven approaches that reduce risk and improve cyber resilience.

Organizations today are not only prioritizing cybersecurity maturity but are also increasingly driven by the need to meet regulatory and compliance requirements. This dual focus is shaping how security programs are designed and executed. Widely adopted frameworks such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), NIST SP 800-53 and Center for Internet Security (CIS) Critical Security Controls are being used not just to strengthen security capabilities but also to align with evolving compliance expectations. Regulated industries, in particular, are guided by mandates like Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and North American Energy Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP), which enforce rigorous standards for data protection, privacy and operational integrity – ultimately making compliance a central pillar in the maturity journey.

Insights Across Industry Maturity Trends

Understanding how different sectors are progressing along their maturation journey offers valuable benchmarking opportunities for organizations looking to evaluate their own posture.

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Financial institutions continue to set the benchmark for cybersecurity maturity, with cyber maturity averaging 2.7 on a Capability Maturity Model Implementation (CMMI) scale of 1-5. This sector benefits from well-established governance models, regulatory pressure and higher cybersecurity investment, up to 15% of IT budgets in some cases, according to Optiv’s 2025 Cybersecurity Threat and Risk Management Report. Investments are focused on advanced identity controls, incident response readiness and automation. The high value of financial data and the risk of reputational damage have driven these firms to implement mature, integrated security programs.

Healthcare organizations have also made significant strides in recent years, raising their average maturity score. Much of this progress is driven by regulatory mandates and the need to protect sensitive patient data across complex, decentralized environments. From thousands of endpoints and medical devices to remote access systems and mobile apps, the attack surface in healthcare is vast. Breaches can disrupt critical care and compromise lives, pushing organizations to improve monitoring, enhance SOC capabilities and adopt more robust data protection tools.

Public sector organizations have shown an improvement in their average maturity buoyed by compliance obligations and national cybersecurity strategies. While budgets may be constrained, the focus on critical infrastructure protection has led to progress in identity access management and incident response capabilities. However, many government entities continue to grapple with legacy systems, workforce shortages and the complexity of inter-agency collaboration – factors that can slow down full-spectrum maturity.

Industrial and Consumer organizations delay other sectors. In manufacturing environments, operational technology (OT) adds layers of complexity, making patching and real-time monitoring difficult without impacting production. For the Consumer industry, cybersecurity is often challenged by limited resources and competing business priorities. Additionally, reliance on sprawling supply chains and third-party services increases risk exposure. According to the 2025 Cybersecurity Threat and Risk Management Report, although an increase from 30% in 2024, only 36% of respondents assessed their supply chain security.

Focus areas across industries for improving Cybersecurity Maturity in 2025

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But here is the problem: attackers do not care whether your sensitive data lives in a file share, a cloud bucket or a database. So why should your security approach?

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Securing user identities remains one of the most critical elements of a mature security program. Organizations that excel in IAM are extending multi-factor authentication (MFA), adopting privileged access management (PAM) and implementing role-based access control across both internal and external users. As IAM matures, the risk of credential-based attacks significantly diminishes.

Incident Response (IR)

The ability to detect, contain and recover from threats is a defining characteristic of a resilient organization. Mature enterprises regularly test incident response playbooks, conduct tabletop exercises and invest in tools like endpoint detection and response (EDR) and managed detection and response (MDR). These efforts ensure that teams can act decisively when an incident occurs.

Asset Visibility and Management

Asset management continues to be a weak link for many sectors, particularly in environments with legacy systems or IoT devices. Without a clear inventory of hardware, software and data flows, it’s impossible to protect what you don’t know exists. Maturity in this domain often begins with automated discovery tools and configuration management databases (CMDBs).

Supply Chain and Third-Party Risk

Third-party risk management is shifting from one-time assessments to continuous monitoring models. Mature organizations are adopting tools that provide near real-time insights into third-party security postures and incident exposures. This is especially critical in industries with extended vendor networks or regulatory scrutiny.

Automation to assist in accelerating Cybersecurity Maturity

As organizations double down on key areas like identity and access management (IAM), incident response (IR) and security automation (SOAR) to improve maturity, automation enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a catalyst that enhances and accelerates progress across all these domains. AI driven automation is not just optimizing existing tools, it’s transforming how security programs operate by bringing intelligence, context and adaptability into previously manual or reactive processes.

Mature cybersecurity programs are investing in real-time telemetry, behavioral analytics and threat intelligence platforms to ensure that threats are detected and addressed before they escalate. This increasing progress in automation capabilities is enabling a shift from static, compliance-driven controls to dynamic, learning-based systems. This evolution not only strengthens foundational practices but also redefines what maturity looks like in a world where threats move faster than ever.