In 2024, the global average cost of a data breach reached a new peak at $4.88 million, according to IBM. But that figure doesn’t reflect the full story. When digital systems serve as the backbone for public services — like healthcare, education, or government portals — the real impact of a breach is societal, not just financial.
The challenge is that most cybersecurity frameworks weren’t built for this level of responsibility. Risk is still too often assessed in terms of company exposure: revenue impact, reputational damage, or audit readiness. But what happens when the systems in question don’t just support a business — they support entire communities, economies, or even state functions?
Few practitioners understand this tension better than Sonia Mishra, a cybersecurity risk management specialist at Cloudflare with more than a decade of experience across the SaaS industry, regulatory compliance, and cloud platform security. In her view, companies that serve public institutions or critical services must stop treating cybersecurity as an internal IT issue and start recognizing their role in preserving infrastructure-level resilience. When platforms support schools, healthcare networks, or federal services, the risk landscape shifts — and so must the strategy.
The Assumptions Behind Enterprise Security
The gap between traditional risk assessment and infrastructure-level responsibility becomes most apparent when systems fail at scale. Cloud providers, HR platforms, healthcare scheduling systems: these are now essential services. But they’re often secured using frameworks designed for isolated corporate systems rather than public-facing infrastructure.
This perspective shift transforms cybersecurity from a technical discipline into a public safety consideration. “The real question isn’t just, ‘What’s vulnerable?'” Mishra explains. “It’s, ‘If this system fails, who gets hurt — and how far does that damage spread?’ That changes how you prioritize risk completely.”
When assessing systems used by federal agencies and healthcare providers, traditional metrics fail to capture the most critical dimensions of risk. Exploitability and asset value matter less than the dependency chain — who depends on these systems for public safety, emergency response, or strategic planning? And what happens if trust, access, or continuity is disrupted?
Rather than measuring impact solely through technical metrics, this approach prioritizes protection based on downstream human consequences. It’s the difference between securing a database and safeguarding data that affects the economic stability and the privacy of millions.
Mapping Risk to Reality
Moving beyond checkbox-compliance requires linking security decisions to actual attack patterns and real-world outcomes. The most effective risk methodologies today integrate historical incident data mapped against frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK and NIST, creating a clear picture of which vulnerabilities matter most in practice, not just in theory.
“Security decisions need to be anchored in how attackers behave in the real world — not in abstract risk categories,” Mishra says. “If we can map real incidents to our actual systems, we’re not just scoring risks — we’re forecasting failure points.”
This hybrid approach represents a fundamental evolution in how security teams communicate value. By translating technical vulnerabilities into practical scenarios, security leaders can more effectively engage business stakeholders in meaningful risk discussions. The focus shifts from compliance requirements to consequence management — precisely what’s needed when systems support essential services or critical infrastructure.
Cybersecurity Across Silos
The infrastructure perspective on cybersecurity demands organizational transformation, not just technical controls. Government contractors implementing frameworks like ISO 27001 quickly discover that secure infrastructure requires coordination across departments that rarely interact. Security becomes everyone’s responsibility when the stakes include public service disruption or sovereign data protection. “Infrastructure-level risk doesn’t respect org charts,” Mishra notes. “You can’t fix a systemwide vulnerability if the teams responsible for it don’t even talk to each other.”
That coordination creates the foundation for meeting increasingly stringent compliance requirements like FedRAMP — frameworks that recognize the special responsibility of managing systems with public impact. What begins as a compliance exercise often reveals the need for structural changes in how organizations approach security governance.
Where the Industry Goes from Here
As digital platforms increasingly replace or augment physical infrastructure, the distinction between “tech companies” and “utilities” continues to blur. Cloud-based systems now support functions that previously required physical presence—from healthcare to education to government services. This transformation demands a corresponding evolution in how we conceptualize security responsibility.
“We have to revisit what constitutes critical infrastructure,” Mishra says. “When a cloud platform hosts systems for thousands of schools, healthcare providers, or government agencies, it becomes a steward of public infrastructure. Our security models need to reflect that level of responsibility.”
Experience suggests that effective security strategies in this new landscape will be contextually aware. They account for real-world dependencies, align with compliance requirements without being driven by them, and bridge the gap between operational security and societal impact.
Security for Systems — and for the People Who Use Them
The next evolution in cybersecurity leadership will be shaped not by the tools organizations adopt, but by how they define their role. Today, a platform doesn’t need to be classified as a utility to function as one. If people or agencies rely on it for essential services, income, or national security, then its operators carry the responsibility of protecting civic infrastructure — whether that’s their intention or not.
For cybersecurity leaders, the imperative is clear: understand the weight of your systems, and design your risk practices to match. The future of cybersecurity is about defending trust at scale, and safeguarding the systems society cannot afford to lose.
