GoKawiilRSAC 2026 CONFERENCE – San Francisco – When people talk about transparency in cybersecurity, they are usually referring to organizations disclosing breaches and incidents. At RSAC Conference this week, two security experts made the case for why success stories deserve equal attention, and why focusing on near-misses can strengthen security defenses. Wendy Nather, senior research initiatives director at 1Password and Bob Lord, head of consumer working group at hacklore.org, emphasized how the industry needs to prioritize transparency, and outlined ways to do so – starting with sharing near-misses.
Information sharing, which encompasses threat intelligence, indicators of compromise, and reports of vulnerability exploitation, is an essential component to combat and stay ahead of cyber threats. The victim blame game, shame, finger-pointing, and regulatory punishments contribute to a lack of transparency, particularly when it comes to ransomware. But that needs to change if organizations want to be proactive, even when it feels daunting.
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Getting Down to the Root Cause
Exposure without exploitation or an identity compromise attempt stopped by architecture are two examples of a near miss, explained Nather. The former is something she frequently observed because many companies struggle to implement sufficient logging capabilities.
"A near miss is anything that almost happened, that makes you say, 'wow if it wasn't for that thing, it would have been really bad'," Nather said.
Companies celebrate moments of heroics or good luck happenstances. They recognize that a threat or attempt was a close call, but they simply return to work, explained Lord, noting how everyone does the same thing, especially management.
That mindset leads to a lack of conversations around near misses in the wild, he said.
"Not trying to use a near miss as an opportunity to run through the full incident response plan is a big waste of time," he warned.
To promote transparency around near misses, the industry needs to eliminate the blame game, he urged. Particularly because human error relates to the proximate cause of an issue and not the root cause, the speakers explained.
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