From Reactive to Proactive: Introducing Indicators of Pre-Attack - Introduction: The Illusion of Readiness
TL;DR: Most cybersecurity programs are stuck in a reactive mode, which leaves them exposed to rapidly evolving, AI-driven threats. The blog advocates for a proactive security approach that uses Indicators of Pre-Attack (IoPAs)—early signs like attacker infrastructure and dark web activity—to spot and stop threats before they strike. By correlating real-time exposures, adversary actions, and threat urgency, organizations can disrupt attacks at their source and gain the upper hand against both traditional and AI-powered adversaries.
Many current cybersecurity strategies serve as comfort blankets—stitched together from dashboards, alerts, and best practices. They make us feel ready. But when an attack hits, we realize we weren’t ready. Not really.
That’s because most of our defenses are built to react. We detect. We investigate. Werespond. All was done after the attacker had already stepped through the front door.
It’s time to rethink the fundamentals: What if we could stop the attack before it even starts? What if we could see the burglar not when they break in, but when they’re buying the tools to do it?
Welcome to proactive security.
Reactive Security: The House Is Already Breached
Let’s break this down using a simple analogy: securing your house.
You installed cameras. Motion sensors. An alarm system. Maybe even subscribe to a patrol service that checks the neighborhood every few hours.
These are reactive measures. They’re valuable. But they’re passive.
They notify you after something suspicious happens. After someone’s hopped the fence. After glass has shattered. After an alert triggers a response team.
The same pattern exists in most corporate cybersecurity programs. Endpoint detection, SIEM alerts, vulnerability scans, incident response plans — they all form layers of reactive defense. Each layer adds friction, but none of them changes the game.
Proactive Security: Think Like theAdversary. Act Before They Do.
Proactive security is a mindset shift. It doesn’t start with alerts. It starts with questions
- Where am I exposed, right now, to a real threat?
- What tools are being assembled to attack me, before the first exploit hits?
Let’s revisit the house analogy.
Imagine you hire a specialist who walks around your property and tells you:
This back window has a faulty latch. If someone breaks in, they’ll likely use it.
That’s proactive step one: finding your weak spots.
Not ina broad, programmatic way, but in a threat-focused, attacker-centric lens.
Now imagine you also get intel that a known criminal gang in your area just bought a high-end drill and a battering ram. They’re scouting properties like yours.They’re mapping your neighborhood. One of their digital scouts flagged your house.
That’s proactive step two: predicting what’s coming, based on how attackers assemble, test, and stage their operations.
Proactive security is both. It’s exposure intel plus predictive threat behavior, tightly correlated. That’s how you stop a breach before it’s even born.
Why the “Vulnerability Pipeline”Doesn’t Work Anymore
The cybersecurity industry has trained us to think in steps
- Inventory everything
- Discover vulnerabilities.
- Assess exploitability.
- Prioritize by CVSS scores or business impact.
- Remediate.
Sounds good. Until it doesn’t.
This linear pipeline fails in real-world, high-velocity environments. Why?
- The inventory is always incomplete. Shadow IT, dynamic assets, ephemeral cloud services, you’ll never catch it all.
- Thousands of vulnerabilities have “high” scores. But not all are under active exploitation.
- Remediation cycles are slow. Risk acceptance creeps in.
- Attackers don’t care about your process. They care about what works right now.
The result? You end up chasing compliance instead of chasing the actual threat.
What matters most is this:
What is the most imminent exposure across my digital attack surface, in the face of the real adversaries targeting me this week?
That’s the heart of proactive security. That’s where your attention should go.
Introducing IoPAs: Indicators of Pre-Attack
We all know IOCs - Indicators of Compromise. They’re the calling cards of past breaches: domains, IPs, file hashes. Useful, but always too late.
What if instead we focused on Indicators of Pre-Attack (IoPAs)?
An IoPAis a signal that something is about to be weaponized against you:
- A new domain that mimics your brand, registered yesterday.
- A cloud-hosted C2 beacon, not yet active, but placed near your asset cluster.
- AI-generated phishing kits targeting your login flows.
These are “soon-to-be" malicious resources. They’re not firing yet. But they will be.
WithIoPAs, you flip the script. You identify the attacker’s infrastructure before it’s operational. You disable it. You block it. You monitor it. You choke offthe threat at the source.
Imagine knowing the attacker’s playbook — before the game starts.
The Real Proactive Equation: Exposure +Threat + Time
Proactive defense is not just finding exposures. And it’s not just tracking attackers.
It’s the correlation of:
- What’s exposed (right now)
- What the adversary is building (right now)
- How urgent and specific the threat is (right now)
This three-part lens gives you clarity and context that dashboards never will.
That’s what malanta.ai is building.
We don’t chase the attack after it begins.
We detect and disrupt the pre-attack infrastructure.
We correlate exposures with adversarial infrastructure, and act before they strike.
Who This Matters To
If you’re a CISO at a mid-sized enterprise, this is your path to asymmetric advantage. You can’t out-staff or out-tool the Fortune 100, but you can outthink them by adopting a proactive posture faster.
If you’re a SecOps engineer, this means less alert fatigue and more clarity. Be the hero who quickly tackled a major risk before it became a problem.
Instead of drowning in false positives, you focus on the signals that matter most. The threats that are forming, not the ones that have already detonated.
If you’re a cybersecurity leader, this is your chance to move from firefighter to strategist. Proactive security isn’t just more efficient — it’s more defensible. It gives you a story to tell the board, the regulator, and your team.
Final Word: Don’t wait for the glass to shatter
Most companies will keep relying on motion sensors and patrols. They’ll respond fast. They’ll recover well. And still — they’ll get breached.
You don’t have to be one of them.
Proactive cybersecurity is no longer a luxury. It’s the only strategy fit for an AI-driven threat landscape.
Because in the end, the best way to defend your house - is to stop the intruder before he even starts the car.
