The Modern Reality: Breach Inevitable, Spread Preventable 

The group began by confronting a sobering reality: breaches are no longer rare incidents, but an operational certainty. Modern attacks are designed for speed, scale, and automation, leaving security teams little time to react. Once an initial compromise occurs, lateral movement follows quickly, turning a single foothold into a full-scale incident. 

Examples such as the Ingram Micro breach illustrated this challenge vividly. Attackers exploited a VPN entry point, harvested credentials, scanned internal systems, and eventually exfiltrated data, and deployed ransomware. Each stage of that chain is familiar and preventable, but only when visibility and containment techniques have been built into designs, and not simply as afterthoughts. 

Lateral Movement: The Underrated Threat Vector 

Participants discussed how lateral movement has become a defining feature of modern cyberattacks. Techniques such as Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) exploitation and Server Message Block (SMB) traversal continue to dominate post-compromise activity, leveraging so called “Living off the Land” techniques to avoid detection by traditional EDR solutions The problem isn’t simply that these techniques exist, it’s that many environments remain too flat, too open, and too trusting. 

Once an attacker breaches the perimeter, they often find minimal segmentation, limited firewall or flow logging, and partial visibility from traditional security tools like EDR or SIEM. The result is a porous environment where a single compromised system can become a launchpad for internal reconnaissance, credential harvesting, and lateral expansion. 

AI-driven malware has only amplified this problem. Campaigns such as Akira or Oyster demonstrate how quickly automation can scale a breach. The attackers’ ability to move through hybrid and multi-cloud environments outpaces the traditional incident response playbook. 

Resilient by Design: Breach Containment for the Modern Enterprise 

One of the strongest themes that emerged was the need to move beyond reactive detection. EDR and SIEM tools remain essential, but they are not enough to stop movement once the attacker is inside. Over-reliance on legacy macro-segmentation approaches also limits effectiveness against today’s threat environment. The conversation shifted toward containment by design, the idea that security architecture should assume compromise and be structured to contain it. 

Illumio’s breach containment model provided the framework for this discussion. By using strategic Zero Trust segmentation and intelligent labelling at a workload-level, organisations can ‘ringfence’ their critical assets, restrict unnecessary communication paths, and rapidly isolate threats without taking entire systems offline. Illumio’s platform and approach allows for rapid deployment of these containment strategies, allowing organisations to build resilience iteratively.  

This selective containment approach was seen as a critical evolution from the traditional “kill switch” response. Instead of shutting down entire networks, predefined incident response policies can be quickly deployed to quarantine only the affected systems, keeping business operations running while the threat is neutralised. 

The Role of Deep Visibility and IR Practice 

The executives agreed that resilience depends on one thing above all: understanding what normal looks like. Visibility across workloads, users, and traffic flows enables earlier detection and faster decisions. When teams know their environment intimately, abnormal behaviour stands out. 

But visibility alone isn’t enough, it must be paired with Incident Response (IR). The group emphasised that predefined incident response plans and tested containment procedures are the key to avoiding hesitation when a breach occurs. Preparedness transforms panic into process. 

Cube Cyber’s perspective reinforced this operational focus. The company’s incident readiness work with clients has shown that response speed and clarity depends on visibility, policy alignment, and the ability to act without fear of disrupting the business. 

Containment as Culture 

Perhaps the most forward-looking insight from the roundtable was that resilience is as much cultural as it is technical. Containment cannot sit as a one-off initiative or an emergency response protocol. It needs to be woven into everyday operations. That means refining access policies, integrating segmentation principles into new IT projects, and aligning security operations with broader business objectives so that containment becomes a default design choice rather than a reactive measure. 

Participants described this shift as moving from a defensive posture to a resilience mindset. The group noted that many organisations still rely heavily on compliance tick-boxes, assuming that meeting framework requirements equates to readiness. The discussion challenged that view. Compliance may be necessary, but it does not prepare an organisation for the speed and complexity of real-world lateral movement. A stronger focus on preparation for the inevitable and building a genuine containment culture emerged as a defining marker of resilience. 

Lessons to Take Forward 

The event closed with a series of practical takeaways that organisations can act on immediately using the Illumio platform: 

• Map your environment: Understand dependencies and communication paths across all assets using the Illumio Map. What is normal? 

• Manage your external attack surface: Leverage new tools like Illumio Insights to identify unprotected cloud-native assets, ensuring the organisation’s attack surface is understood. 

• Define and test containment policies: Build muscle memory for rapid isolation during incidents. 

• Adopt segmentation early: Limit exposure and control east-west movement before a breach. 

• Refine continuously: Use visibility tools and post-incident reviews to strengthen defenses. 

The message was clear. Resilience is not achieved through tools alone, but through disciplined design and ongoing operational readiness. Many organisations understand the value of segmentation, yet the execution often falls behind due to complexity, legacy constraints, or uncertainty about where to start. The roundtable reinforced that platforms like Illumio can help simplify this journey, providing the visibility and structure needed to make segmentation practical and achievable as part of a broader Zero Trust approach. 

Next Steps 

The roundtable concluded with a shared recognition that breach containment is now a core requirement for every organisation. Building resilience requires visibility, preparation, and the ability to contain threats while maintaining business continuity. 

For organisations operating across both on premises and cloud native environments, now is the time to assess how well your architecture supports containment by design. If you would like guidance on strengthening visibility and building rapid response capability, our team can help. 

Learn how Cube Cyber and Illumio support organisations in building stronger containment strategies: Contact Us