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Until I discovered Acalvio, I was doing what most organizations still do today: build walls at the perimeter and prepare to recover when — not if — the adversary breaks through. Firewalls, phishing filters, endpoint protection, and a plan for resiliency. That was the playbook. But there’s a critical piece missing from that sequence — a tactical middle ground that too many defenders overlook. It’s called deception. And it changes everything.

March 29 is Smoke and Mirrors Day—a nod to the classic art of illusion where magicians used theatrical misdirection to wow audiences. It’s a celebration of trickery, sleight of hand, and optical illusion. But what if we told you that deception isn’t just for the stage? In the world of cybersecurity, deception has become one of the most powerful tools to detect and derail adversaries. Instead of misleading the audience, defenders are using digital smoke and mirrors to mislead attackers. And it works. Today, we tip our hats to the illusionists of the cybersecurity world—the defenders using cyber deception to outwit, outmaneuver, and outsmart.

Preemptive cybersecurity defense means taking the initiative. Instead of reacting to indicators of compromise, it focuses on adversary objectives—stealing data, escalating privileges, gaining persistence—and puts obstacles in their way. It’s not about predicting the next attack. It’s about setting traps that force attackers to show themselves early—while there’s still time to shut them down.

GigaOm recently published its 2025 GigaOm Radar report for Deception Technology. With the cyber threat landscape at a particular inflection point from the rise of AI-driven attacks, this report is timely for cybersecurity decision-makers and industry leaders. The research involved an extensive comparison among 14 deception vendors to enable a comparison among the solutions to enable customers to make an informed decision on the solution that would be best suited for them. The research involved a set of key business criteria for deception solutions and involved the requirements of different target segments, SMB, large enterprises, and public sector. Figure 1: Acalvio continues its industry leadership in deception (closest to the inner circle)

Cybersecurity has witnessed a dramatic evolution over the decades, particularly in the realm of deception technologies. What began as static honeypots has now transformed into sophisticated, AI-driven active and preemptive defense systems. Here’s a look at this journey, tracing key innovations that have reshaped how organizations outsmart attackers.

On January 16, 2025, President Biden signed a landmark executive order focused on strengthening and promoting innovation in the nation’s cybersecurity landscape. While the directive addresses a broad range of critical cybersecurity issues, it also creates new opportunities for advanced solutions like deception technology to play a pivotal role in bolstering national cyber defense. Here’s what this means for cyber deception and its potential to transform how organizations and agencies combat cyber threats.

In this two-part blog series, we examine how advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming the cybersecurity landscape. In our first article, we discuss how threat actors now employ AI to automate the creation of code exploits for known (one-day) and unknown (zero-day) vulnerabilities. This capability not only quickens the pace of attacks but also significantly enlarges their potential impact. In our upcoming blog, we will address AI-enabled polymorphic malware and ransomware, designed to slip past traditional, signature-based detections. The emergence of such technologies calls for a revolutionary approach to cyber defense strategies to effectively counter these evolving threats.

Endpoint security remains a cornerstone of modern cybersecurity strategies, primarily driven by Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions. While EDR has become a widely adopted safeguard for user and server environments, it has a set of detection gaps that need to be complemented. The increasingly sophisticated tactics of adversaries demand a robust, layered approach to threat detection that transcends traditional methods. This is where cyber deception comes into play as an indispensable complement to EDR, reinforcing the defense-in-depth strategy essential for comprehensive threat protection.

The NSA, CISA, and allied cybersecurity agencies from the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, including the UK Government, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre have released comprehensive guidance to mitigate threats against Active Directory (AD), highlighting 17 common attack techniques used by adversaries. Given AD’s fundamental role in central authentication and authorization, it is an attractive target for attackers aiming to elevate privileges and gain unauthorized access to critical systems and sensitive data. The report is available at: https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Press-Releases-Statements/Press-Release-View/Article/3917556/nsa-jointly-releases-guidance-for-mitigating-active-directory-compromises/

As cyber threats evolve in complexity and scale, financial institutions remain one of the most targeted industries worldwide. In India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and SEBI’s Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF) now mandate that financial institutions adopt robust defense strategies to protect critical infrastructure like SWIFT systems, payment terminals, and cloud environments. Traditional security tools are no longer sufficient to defend against the increasing sophistication of attacks, such as ransomware, advanced persistent threats (APTs), and insider threats. This is where ShadowPlex, with its advanced deception technology, becomes a critical component of a financial institution’s defense strategy. It offers an innovative, proactive approach to detect and neutralize threats before they can cause significant damage.

The 2024 CrowdStrike Threat Hunting Report emphasizes the evolution of adversaries as they navigate through identity, endpoint, and cloud domains. As adversaries adopt increasingly stealthy techniques and shift across these domains, threat hunting teams must adapt and refine their strategies to effectively track and neutralize these advanced threats.

Threat actors are continuing to gain sophistication and stealth, with 2024 seeing an escalation in the magnitude and impact of breaches. Recent research from the CrowdStrike Threat Hunting Report 2024 highlights the increase in living off the land exploits, insider threats, identity compromise, and cloud-specific threats as modern adversaries evolve to bypass traditional security solutions. At Fal.Con 2024, from September 16-19 in Las Vegas, Arsen Darakdjian, Senior Vice President of Global Cybersecurity from Paramount, will join me in a breakout session to discuss how technological innovations in deception technology are defending against these evolving threats.