In cybersecurity, we assume experience reduces risk. But what if it’s doing the opposite? What if teams are becoming more efficient but at the same time they are quietly losing the ability to adapt?
In Nexova's latest Secured Mindset newsletter with Jaime Cará Junior, Head of Nexova's Cyber Academy, we explore why even high-performing teams are more vulnerable than they think and how organisations need to think differently.
In cybersecurity, some might assume that experience reduces risk. What if our skills and knowledge are getting buried beneath our experience?
It's almost natural to think that the longer someone has been in a role, the more incidents they’ve handled and the stronger their capability should be. But what if the opposite is happening? What if, over time, teams become more efficient in familiar situations while quietly losing the ability to respond to unfamiliar ones?
This is the hidden risk of skill decay and why solely focusing on doing your job well can actually mean that your skills are getting worse.
Why cybersecurity is especially exposed
In high-stakes domains, such as aviation, emergency medicine, military operations and, increasingly, cybersecurity, you need to be prepared for the worst, but you don’t want the worst to happen. You want your routine to be safe and predictable. However, if that’s the only context where you operate, your skills decay quickly.
At the same time, attackers continuously develop novel techniques, shift tooling and exploit newly discovered vulnerabilities, rendering your defensive knowledge not merely incomplete but misleading. What worked yesterday may already be outdated today.
MITRE ATT&CK releases updates multiple times per year, with each iteration introducing new sub-techniques, deprecating others and reflecting observed shifts in real-world attacker behaviour. The window between vulnerability disclosure and active exploitation has compressed dramatically, with some recent studies reporting impact within days – even hours – of disclosure.
The illusion of competence
At first glance, skill decay sounds like forgetting. But that’s not what’s happening.
In reality, the brain is constantly optimising. We get better at doing what we already do. But at the same time, the brain starts removing unused capabilities and ultimately reducing our ability to adapt outside of those familiar patterns.
Routine performance can improve while adaptability and capability decay. So, the biggest cyber risk is not that people forget what they learned, it is that they become increasingly efficient in familiar situations, while gradually losing the adaptability required for unfamiliar ones.
The result is a dangerous illusion of competence: performance appears strong until the day an incident demands capabilities that have not been exercised.
Stress reveals the gap
During a cyber incident, pressure changes everything. Stress makes it harder to analyse, adapt and make decisions.
Traditional cyber training focuses on knowledge. But knowledge alone doesn’t guarantee performance. Organisations across sectors have to shift towards continuous capability maintenance through scenario-based exercises, simulations and performance assessments.
Realistic, scenario-based training supports decision-making in high pressure situations to build pattern recognition and psychological readiness. Training that is both bespoke and relevant ensures the brain is ready to adapt to new situations and challenges. This leads to significant reduction in uncertainty and protects teams against stress-induced degradation in performance.
The mindset shift
Cyber resilience isn’t built on what people know. It’s built on what they can execute under pressure, when it matters most.
The biggest cyber risk is not a lack of knowledge. It’s the gradual erosion of capability hidden behind good performance.
The real question is not: “Are our teams skilled?” It is: “Are their skills still ready?”
Nexova provides specialist training, delivered by our highly experienced consultants and underpinned by our proprietary Cyber Integration Test and Evaluation Field (CITEF®) digital emulation platform. Find out more: Cyber Academy cybersecurity training.