Most Companies Protect What Attackers Never Even Target
Prague, July 8, 2026
The new Cybersecurity Act shifts responsibility for cybersecurity into the boardroom. The question is: is your company defending itself against real attackers, or merely checking compliance boxes?
Imagine two companies. Both operate a modern Security Operations Center (SOC), both have invested millions in software that continuously monitors their networks. Yet only one of them would stop a real attack. The difference is not the technology, but who designed the defense.
As of November 1, 2025, the new Czech Cybersecurity Act (No. 264/2025 Coll.), implementing the European NIS2 Directive, came into force. It affects an estimated six to nine thousand organizations across dozens of sectors, from energy and e-commerce to public administration, and places responsibility directly on company leadership. Personally. Violations can result in fines of up to EUR 10 million or 2% of annual turnover.
For board members, this changes the key question. It is no longer "Do we have a SOC?" — almost everyone does today — but rather: "Would our SOC stop an attack that could leave me facing legal consequences?"
And here is the uncomfortable truth. Most security operations centers are built backwards: defenders configure hundreds of detection rules according to best-practice guides and start collecting data. The system generates thousands of alerts every day, but most of them are noise. Analysts become overwhelmed by false positives while the one quiet indicator of a real attacker slips through unnoticed. Companies end up monitoring what attackers never even touch. It is like hiring a security guard who has never been on the other side of the fence: they know the rules, but the real burglar enters through the window nobody considered.
The difference lies in who designed the defense. A team made up of penetration testers and red teamers understands the anatomy of an attack from the inside. They know which path an attacker will take because they walk that path themselves every day. Detection is therefore built not according to a handbook, but according to how real intrusions actually happen.
"Most organizations defend themselves according to guidelines, not reality. We design detection the same way we conduct offensive security testing, because only then do you truly understand where attackers are actually looking," explains Tomáš Volný, Head of SOC at axelum.
The new legislation also requires organizations to report serious cybersecurity incidents within 24 hours. Having security tools in place and being able to reconstruct overnight how an attacker gained access and what data was compromised are two very different things.
So what should organizations do? The answer is not another tool, but a different perspective. Security monitoring should be built from the attacker's point of view toward defense. This is exactly the principle behind axelum's approach:
"Our SOC is operated by people who not only detect attacks but also perform them in controlled security assessments. We regularly validate our own defenses through realistic attack simulations, allowing us to identify weaknesses before real adversaries do. The goal is not more alerts, but the right alerts — and the ability to quickly explain what happened when an incident occurs," adds Filip Štolle, CEO of axelum.
And as with any risk that could eventually appear in an annual report, compliance on paper and true cyber resilience are not the same thing. The difference becomes visible in a single moment: during an attack. The question every executive team should ask is simple: Do we want a defense that passes an audit, or one that stops an attacker?
