In the cybersecurity field, there is an old saying that “Prevention is better than cure”; however, this practice has become irrelevant considering today’s cyber threats. Cyber criminals have become far more advanced than they once were and now use things like artificial intelligence to help assist them, zero-day attacks and supply chain attacks, enabling them to get by your network security tools – like firewalls, endpoint security and two-factor authentication – and infiltrate your organization in a variety of ways.
To explain this further, let’s compare it to securing your home from burglars; you have a nice lock on the front door and an expensive alarm system (prevention). However, what happens if a burglar is able to pick the lock or a window you did not see? Your best option would be to use a motion sensor that sends an extremely bright light at night and instantly calls the police upon any type of motion detected (detection). In terms of cyber security, the faster you can detect a breach, the less severe the breach will be, and the more manageable the situation will be.
The data backs this up strongly. According to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025, the global average cost of a data breach is $4.88 million; however, organizations that found evidence of the breach within a few days to a week saved an average of over $1 million compared to organizations that took months to discover the breach. The key factors in these savings were detection speed. Organizations that discovered incidents in under 200 days (the global average) incurred a significant amount of debt to resolve these issues; however, when an organization can detect threats within hours (e.g., via alerts or other notification methods), they can reduce their costs by 50% or more. The reason for the cost reduction is due to dwell time: the time period when an attacker can lurk and operate undetected. During this time, they are able to exfiltrate sensitive data, install ransomware on servers, and move around undetected until they reach critical systems.
A good example of this was the MOVEit breach that occurred in 2024. Although there were strong preventative controls in place, the attackers had been able to remain undetected for several weeks and were able to compromise several thousand organizations. In contrast, I have worked with a manufacturing SME in the past year, and as a result of a VAPT scan revealing security gaps in their infrastructure, the organization implemented a Managed Detection and Response (MDR) program. When the company experienced a phishing attack that compromised an employee, their MDR team was able to detect an anomalous account within 23 minutes. Their MDR team was able to identify and stop the lateral movement of a compromised account before any data was left by the organization. The organization was able to contain the attack within 55 minutes of detection and incurred a minimal loss.
So, how do you prioritize detection without ditching prevention? Start with these actionable shifts:
In India, with impending compliance obligations from the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP Act) and the manufacturing sector being a target of nation-state actors, this is no longer optional. Faster threat detection is a proactive approach to controlling damage as opposed to a reaction; it provides an organisation with greater protection from downtime, fines and damage to its reputation. Prevention provides a wall; detection provides a weapon for security personnel to use against threats. 2026 Cyber War: Speed wins.
How much will the next data breach cost you in lakhs if you concentrate on locks rather than lights? This is a great time to assess your organisation's detection capabilities.
Ancrew Global helps organisations make that shift from slow, prevention‑only security to fast, detection‑driven defence by deploying and managing EDR, XDR, MDR and SIEM, backed by incident response playbooks tailored for Indian SMEs and enterprises.