Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Firewalls are the single most common source of misconfiguration-related breaches, yet they get changed a hundred times a week and audited once a quarter. This is the network security gap AI attackers exploit first. Endpoint gets the budget. Identity gets the roadmap. The firewall gets changed constantly and reviewed rarely. It is also the control most tied to breaches: 42% of security teams pinned a firewall misconfiguration to a breach or near miss last year, ahead of EDR at 40% and identity at 39%.

Network security controls change constantly. As rules are altered, controls drift from baselines and risk gets buried in the rulebase. Stale firewall rules stay live, shadowed rules obscure exposure, and overly permissive any/any rules sneak in.

Which of your users can reach a sensitive app without ever hitting MFA? Most security teams can't answer that with confidence. Microsoft Entra ID and Conditional Access is powerful. But exclusions stack up, MFA coverage drifts, and risk-based protections go unused. This creates openings for fast-moving AI-powered attackers. Reach continuously validates your controls against your security intent, closes the gaps, and proves the risk reduction.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint ships with serious firepower. But most of it is sitting idle. ASR rules get stuck in audit mode. Devices never get fully onboarded. Exploit protection is switched off. Security baselines drifting across device groups. You're paying for protection that isn't turned on. Reach analyzes your Defender deployment, surfaces every gap, prioritizes the fixes by real risk reduced, and keeps your controls aligned as you scale.

A firewall's entire job is to control what gets in. In Reach's research, it was the most common source of a configuration-related near miss or exposure, ahead of EDR and identity controls. It does not take much. One rule broadened for a project, one exception that outlived its reason, one change that shipped without anyone checking it against intent. A single overly permissive rule, sitting live between quarterly reviews, is enough.

Observability is not the problem anymore. The data that tells you a change will break something usually already exists. Most teams have the events, the logs, the configuration history. What is missing is the step that turns all of it into a clear yes or no on a specific change, while there is still time to pull it. Garrett Hamilton, CEO of Reach Security, on objective data and the changes that get made before anyone checks.