The lack of nationwide security and privacy ordinance means that data governance is placed in the hands of states to develop their own regulations and requirements, yet less than half of all states have passed data privacy regulations as of February 2025. States such as California, Colorado, Indiana, and Maryland have comprehensive privacy laws whereas states such as Nevada, Vermont, and Washington have narrow privacy laws in effect. Some states enact strict policies and penalties in the face of a cyber-attack or breach. Other states offer the ability to correct security flaws without facing punishments or consequences. Recently, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) issued a report outlining how state security laws fail to protect privacy and ways to improve.  With the onset of emerging technologies such as AI and quantum computing, it’s never been more critical to ensure that data is protected. This means that in the near future, businesses need to reevaluate their policies and procedures to meet evolving standards. Security teams who do not have the proper resources or knowledge are left vulnerable to attacks like ransomware.  During this turbulent time, it is important for business and security team leaders to equip themselves with a robust cyber resilience plan and strategy. The main concern is the ability for threat actors to take advantage of evolving legislation causing weaknesses in networks and systems.  Related:Threat Actors will Take AdvantageBad actors are aware of how vulnerable businesses currently are with changing policies and regulations and may try to capitalize on the current landscape. Threat actors will take advantage of the fact that security teams are not getting the most up-to-date threat information and analytics from national researchers. Recent cuts to the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center for example, means that organizations no longer have access to intelligence briefings on emerging cybersecurity threats, notices on the latest security patches, incident response support and penetration testing.  IT teams cannot equally fight blind spots in their networks such as misconfigurations and exposures while also staying ahead of advanced sophisticated attack strategies. The only way to combat this is to ensure a proactive offensive cybersecurity strategy that is prepared ahead of inevitable attacks. Adopting an Offensive Cybersecurity Strategy The key to mitigating fines, reputational damage, and operational loss lies in being on the offense and having a well-documented remediation strategy. This approach includes strong security controls, regular software and system updates, network monitoring and visibility, frequent employee training, incident response planning and ensuring immutable backup and segmentation of storage for your data.  Related:Strong access controls mean granting only the necessary access to employees so that they may perform their specific job function without viewing other data or information. This can be done using multifactor authentication, requiring multiple forms of verification. On top of this, conducting regular system and software updates that can patch vulnerabilities and scan for any rectifiable weaknesses in the system is a must. However, once these updates are made it is also important to have a granular view of the network and ecosystem. A robust employee training program should also be incorporated. Employees who have strong cyber maturity are less likely to leave a backdoor open for bad actors to break through.  No offensive security approach is complete without incidence response planning. If roles and responsibilities are outlined prior to an attack, then operational downtime may be minimized if a plan is put in motion at the first sign of malicious behavior.  Related:Deploying Immutable StorageIt is important to highlight that one of the best ways to ensure your data is protected and secured is to employ immutable storage. This is because it stores a backup copy of unalterable and undeletable data, offering strong protection against data tampering or loss. Applying facets of zero trust to your immutable storage (as mentioned in ZTDR best practices) completely segments the backup software from the backup storage and adheres to the 3-2-1 backup rule as well as the extended 3-2-1-1-0 backup rule. Employing a 3-2-1-1-0 backup strategy effectively leverages the strengths of both immutable and traditional backups, optimizing security and resource allocation. Immutable backups can be established through various infrastructures and stored across diverse platforms, including on-premise and cloud environments. Unlike conventional backups that may be susceptible to changes, immutable backups create unchangeable copies of your valuable data, offering an ironclad defense against accidental or malicious modifications. Another benefit of immutable backup is its ability to help companies maintain data integrity and comply with legal and regulatory data retention requirements, ensuring that original data copies are preserved accurately. Overall, with less federal oversight of security and privacy regulations, these requirements are now in states' hands. Some states offer a window to rectify security flaws without further penalty, while others enact stiff penalties for a customer breach along with requiring direct engagement from a state regulator. Therefore, business leaders need to keep their data safe to mitigate monetary loss and reputational damage by adopting an offensive cybersecurity strategy and deploying truly immutable storage to ensure compliance and resiliency.