At a time when cyber threats are escalating at unprecedented rates, a new warning has emerged for businesses and government entities: networks may be exposing organizations to more danger than they realize.
Lawrence Pingree, Vice President at Dispersive and former security lead at Gartner, has published “Your Network Is Showing — Time to Go Stealth,” an in-depth look at how cyberattacks have evolved beyond the perimeter.
Pingree points out that malicious actors are no longer simply trying to bypass defenses — they’re now executing coordinated campaigns that target the defenses themselves. Firewalls, VPNs, and control planes, once the cornerstone of cybersecurity strategies, are often becoming the first points of failure.
This is why conventional approaches to securing networks — relying heavily on firewalls, VPNs, and perimeter defenses — are no longer sufficient against today’s sophisticated adversaries.
The problem, Pingree explains, lies in how most networks openly advertise their presence. Even if data is encrypted, malefactors can still detect, map, and target these networks through metadata like IP addresses, DNS queries, and other telltale digital “footprints.”
Once a network is visible, it becomes a potential target for reconnaissance, exploitation, and breach attempts.
The New Front Door
He says attacks on firewall and VPN infrastructure have hit the headlines in the last twelve months for good reason.
In April 2024, Palo Alto Networks’ PAN-OS suffered a zero-day vulnerability that enabled bad actors to install a Python-based backdoor known as UPSTYLE. This instance, called Operation Midnight Eclipse, bypassed firewall defenses and enabled full remote access to internal networks.
Only a month previously, the Volt Typhoon campaign — attributed to a Chinese state-sponsored group, went after America’s infratructure by targeing Fortinet’s FortiGuard devices and Cisco routers. Far from being opportunistic, Pingree says these events were strategic, persistent, aimed at exploiting firewall and VPN weak points to gain long-term control over sensitive systems.
A New Line of Defense
Emerging stealth networking technologies offer a new line of defense, he says. By obfuscating network presence — effectively making critical infrastructure invisible to unauthorized users — stealth solutions help organizations significantly lower their attack surface.
Aligning closely with zero trust principles, this proactive security model sees that only verified users and devices can access resources, without ever revealing the broader network to the outside world.
Dispersive is advocating for entities to rethink how they protect their data and operations, moving beyond traditional methods toward more resilient, stealth-based networking models.
For a deeper dive into why going stealth is becoming a cybersecurity imperative — and what you can do about it — the full blog post is available here.
Information Security Buzz News Editor
Kirsten Doyle has been in the technology journalism and editing space for nearly 24 years, during which time she has developed a great love for all aspects of technology, as well as words themselves. Her experience spans B2B tech, with a lot of focus on cybersecurity, cloud, enterprise, digital transformation, and data centre. Her specialties are in news, thought leadership, features, white papers, and PR writing, and she is an experienced editor for both print and online publications.
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