Security is often imagined as a defense against elite attackers with custom exploits. In practice, the overwhelming majority of real incidents come from far more mundane gaps: weak authentication, unpatched dependencies, and access permissions nobody ever revoked after an employee left.
The fundamentals that actually prevent incidents
Enforced multi-factor authentication, dependencies kept up to date rather than frozen at whatever version shipped originally, and access reviewed periodically rather than granted once and forgotten: these unglamorous basics prevent far more real incidents than any advanced tooling layered on top of a shaky foundation.
Security as an ongoing practice, not a one-time audit
The businesses that handle security well don't treat it as a project with an end date; they treat it as a standing practice: regular dependency updates, access reviews on a schedule, and a genuine incident response plan written before it's needed, not improvised during one. That posture costs far less than the incident it prevents.