Is Your Business Secured Like an Egg or an Onion?

We love a good analogy in the world of cybersecurity. So, let’s talk about eggs and onions. Not for breakfast, but because your business might be one or the other. Let’s dive in.

The Egg: A Fragile Reality

Picture this: you’ve invested in a shiny new security solution. Maybe it’s a fantastic outsourced SOC, the latest extended detection and response (XDR) tool, a robust VPN gateway, or a comprehensive phishing training programme.

You feel secure, thinking the shell will keep the bad guys out. Right? Wrong.

Here’s the thing: if your entire defensive strategy relies on just one or two solutions, and you’re trusting them to work all the time, you’re building an egg.

Sure, the outer shell might be tough. It might stop the first few blows. But what happens when a determined attacker finds a weak point and cracks it? The soft, vulnerable interior of your organisation is laid bare. No enforced secondary barriers, no fail safes. Just free rein for attackers to infiltrate, steal data, or disrupt operations.

Unfortunately, this scenario is all too common. Many businesses operate with an outside-in single-layered mindset, investing heavily in edge solutions or vendors while neglecting what lies on the inside. And with over 70% of cyberattacks targeting people (via phishing emails, vishing calls, or social engineering) attackers often bypass your edge altogether.

That’s the reality of the egg: fragile, brittle, and unable to withstand persistent pressure.

Enter the Onion: Strength in Layers

Now, let’s talk about onions. Not as glamorous as the egg, perhaps, but far more effective when it comes to security. An onion’s strength lies in its layers: peel one back, and another lies beneath it. And another.

This is the mindset every business should adopt: layered defences that stop attackers at every stage of their journey.

A Layered Approach

1. Outer Layers: These are your perimeter defences: firewalls, VPNs, EDR tools. Think of them as the gatekeepers. Important, but not infallible.
2. Middle Layers: Proactive monitoring and defence—like managed detection and response (MDR) or anomaly detection—keep a watchful eye on threats that bypass your outer defences. They form the next line of defence, but they must be tested to ensure they’re effective
3. Core Layers: The last bastion of security, these layers protect what matters most: sensitive data, intellectual property, and mission-critical systems. Tools like zero-trust architectures, strict access controls, and incident response plans mitigate the damage attackers can do if they make it this far.

Why Eggs Fail (and Onions Don’t)

The egg approach often results from over-reliance on vendor promises of “silver bullet” solutions. Unfortunately, attackers don’t follow your playbook. Here’s the hard truth: Cyberattacks don’t play by your rules.

They come from all directions:

• A phishing email bypasses your spam filter and tricks an employee into sharing credentials.
• A compromised device connects to your VPN, creating a direct route into your network.
• A vendor with access to your systems is breached, giving attackers a backdoor into your organization.

Once inside, the egg’s thin internal defenses fail to detect or stop lateral movement. By the time an alert triggers—if it does at all—the attacker may have already achieved their goal. It’s too late.

Building Your Security Onion

The security onion isn’t just about tools. It’s a mindset. It assumes breaches will happen, and focuses on limiting the damage attackers can do when they occur.

Key steps to building your onion:

1. Embrace Continuous Testing: Regular penetration testing and red teaming simulate real-world attacks, identifying vulnerabilities before attackers do
2. Train Your Teams: Cybersecurity isn’t just IT’s job. Employees should be trained to recognise phishing attempts, follow best practices, and respond effectively to threats.
3. Adopt Zero-Trust Principles: Don’t trust; verify. Always validate the identity of users and devices, whether they’re inside or outside your network.
4. Enhance Detection and Response: Strong perimeters are great, but what happens when someone gets through? Invest in tools and processes to detect, isolate, and respond to threats inside your network
5. Work with Real Adversaries: At CovertSwarm, we think like attackers because we are attackers (the ethical kind, of course). By continuously applying pressure across your business, we find and fix vulnerabilities before the real threats do.

Don’t Be an Egg

Cybersecurity isn’t about building an impenetrable shell; it’s about creating a resilient system that keeps attackers out—or contains them if they get in. At CovertSwarm, we help businesses like yours transition from fragile eggs to fortified onions, uncovering weaknesses and transforming defences.

So, what’s your business secured like—an egg or an onion?

Ready to find out? Let’s talk.