Why Good Cyber Defense Rarely Stops Attackers

Global Cyber Alliance: as AI Fuels Cybercrime, Outcomes Keep Getting Worse Anna Delaney (annamadeline) • February 5, 2026

Security leaders have spent years expanding controls, improving hygiene and building partnerships. Adoption is up. Cooperation is broader. Despite that, phishing, scams and fraud continue to surge.

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Brian Cute, interim CEO of the Global Cyber Alliance, says the problem lies how success is defined. Attackers optimize for volume, speed and cost. Defensive programs, in contrast, often measure participation and incremental improvement - metrics that don't translate into friction for criminal operations.

"When you consider the increase in volume in the last couple years and think forward, what's coming at us is a literal tsunami of more effective scams, more effective phishing attacks, coupling that with deepfake technology and the improvement in click-through rates, the reduction in costs for cybercriminals, this ...