As cloud adoption accelerates, so do the stakes for keeping data and systems secure. In early 2025, a major tech conglomerate suffered a high-profile breach when a misconfigured cloud firewall exposed sensitive data from millions of customers across multiple continents. Investigations revealed that overly broad access permissions and poor visibility into their overall security posture contributed to the incident—underscoring the fact that, despite sophisticated tools, even a single gap in configuration can unravel an entire security program. Below, Anthony Rivera and Kevin Hartwig explain how to prevent such missteps by strengthening identity controls, segmenting networks, guarding data, ensuring compliance, managing your security posture, and creating a culture of awareness.