Cybersecurity: Ignore It at Your Own Peril

Insights from Waste Expo360 Investor Summit

Originally posted on LinkedIn by Marc Brungardt

Just back from Waste Expo360 Investor Summit in Las Vegas, where I had the privilege of speaking on a critical topic for today’s business leaders and investors: cybersecurity—and why ignoring it is a dangerous gamble.

If you couldn’t attend, here’s a summary of key insights and some practical advice to help you assess and strengthen your cybersecurity posture.

1. Define the Risk

Cybercrime is a $10 trillion global threat. It’s no longer just about nation-state actors. Ransomware gangs and cybercriminals target industries like waste management because of their operational complexity and lack of cybersecurity maturity.

The stakes? Extortion, disruption, and long-term damage.

The impacts of a breach include:

• Financial Losses

  • Direct: incident response, legal fees, fines, ransomware payments.

  • Indirect: downtime, lost customers, rising premiums, long-term revenue loss.

• Reputational Damage

  • Customer churn, negative press, partner attrition.

• Regulatory Consequences

  • Fines, lawsuits, audits, and compliance failures.

• Operational Disruption

  • Downtime, lost productivity, critical systems offline.

• Loss of IP and Competitive Advantage

• Future Security Costs

  • Upgrades, new tooling, employee training, insurance hikes.

These risks can be proactively identified through a security assessment tailored to your business.

As an investor, ask yourself:

• Are we prepared for a multi-day ransomware incident?
• Do we have incident response and disaster recovery plans?
• Are we aligned with our cyber insurance terms?
• How exposed is our portfolio to these operational and financial risks

2: Artificial Intelligence (AI): The Force Multiplier for Attackers

AI is now central to both offensive and defensive cyber strategy.

Adversaries use AI to:

• Automate and scale phishing with natural language precision.
• Clone voices and generate deepfakes to bypass identity checks.
• Write evasive, adaptive malware.
• Gather open-source intel and craft personalized attacks.
• Bypass AI security tools using adversarial inputs and bots.

We explore many of these risks and countermeasures on our AI Security page.

The result? Lower barriers to entry for cybercriminals and more sophisticated, believable attacks—at scale.

3. How We’re Countering with AI + Google Cloud

At Foresite, we’re leveraging the best of Google Cloud Security’s AI-driven capabilities to defend against these evolving threats:

• Anomaly Detection using machine learning across networks and behavior baselines.

• Advanced Malware Analysis that identifies zero-days and polymorphic threats.

• Intelligent Alert Prioritization to cut through noise.

• Automated Incident Response using SOAR and intelligent triage.

• Predictive Security to identify emerging tactics before they land.

4. Will Every System Eventually Be Hacked?

In short—yes, eventually. No system is invulnerable. The question is whether you’re ready when it happens.

Why breaches are inevitable:

• Attackers evolve constantly—and now use AI.

• Software is never 100% secure.

• Human error persists.

• Zero-days can’t always be patched in time.

What matters most:

• Minimizing the impact of a breach.

• Detecting fast and responding even faster.

• Designing systems for resilience.

With 24/7 SOC support and MXDR capabilities, Foresite Citadel empowers organizations to detect, contain, and respond to threats before they escalate.

5. The One Most Important Thing? There Isn’t One.

The moderator asked: “What’s the one thing every business should do to be secure?”

There isn’t just one.

Security is a system, not a silver bullet. MFA might be the best first step for a small firm. For a large enterprise, it’s incident response testing. It depends on your maturity and risk.

What works:

• People: Employee education and vigilance.

• Process: Sound policies and tested procedures.

• Technology: The right tools, deployed intelligently.

This is where vCISO services deliver board-level cybersecurity leadership, aligning strategy, governance, and policy with business risk.

Final Thought: Security is a Shared Responsibility

Cybersecurity is now a boardroom issue. Investors must demand transparency, prioritize security posture, and align with experienced partners. As our digital and physical worlds converge, securing your operations also secures your investment.