• Traditional AV tools only provide partial protection to today’s sophisticated threats. It’s possible (and easier than you think) to fully protect your assets.
• You can drastically slash the number of threats you’re up against by reducing your attack surface, using solutions built on a positive security model.
• A positive security model reduces risk by only allowing trusted apps and processes to run, blocking everything else by default.

Today’s threats are on the ultimate smash-and-grab tour, with the headliners playing the same tune as Take the Money and Run. Not only are today’s threats persistently pricey (a single breach costs $4.4 million), they’re getting more aggressive, too. Gone are the days of: “I encrypted your hard drive—pay me to decrypt it.” We’re living in an age of multi-pronged attacks where bad actors are teaming up to steal and weaponize your data more effectively than ever. And that’s not a rock ballad anyone wants to hear.

To best protect your organization, it’s time to reach beyond old-school antivirus (AV) solutions. While AV is an invaluable part of the puzzle, on its own it isn’t able to keep up and provide the secure, continuous protection needed in today’s environments. 

In the recent webinar, The Truth About Positive Security, application control gurus Lee Mussehl and Elizabeth Schultheisz laid out what’s at risk when organizations rely on AV alone, and why a positive security model offers a stronger path forward.

For the AV-only teams out there, here’s what you need to weigh about positive security, what often holds people back, and what you can take from real-world orgs who are already proving this model works.

Security stagnation—the most dangerous threat of all

Yes, cyber threats themselves are dangerous, but you may be your own biggest threat. 

Aside from the 4.4 million dollars a breach could cost you, you’re also risking a loss of productivity from unscheduled downtime, performance degradation, and a damaged reputation. Not to mention the risk of being outpriced by competitors—while the share of organizations that raised prices in direct relation to a breach fell to 45% in 2025, compared to 63% last year, a third of them said they would hike prices more than 15%.

Deny by default and skip the fallout

If you’re willingly running on AV alone, what happens when “known bad” isn’t the problem, but the unknown? When you take a positive security stance (also known as default/deny, not to be confused with “Deny” by Default), you write the rules on what is allowed rather than what isn’t. That way, you’re minimizing the surface area that can be attacked.

For instance, application control solutions built on a positive security model identify software and only allow trusted software and activities—everything else is automatically blocked. Access is granted solely to those that can prove trust. 

Gain confidence and momentum with quick wins

It’s at this point that hesitation often creeps in. It’s not about the stronger protection a positive security model offers, but the perceived effort it takes to put it in place. 

In reality, ease of implementation depends on how well you know your environment. If you have a good handle on your endpoints, you won’t have a long and winding road. But you don’t have to go from zero to one hundred either. Even a gradual adoption at your own pace gives you more protection than AV alone.  

What does matter is momentum—positive security can pay off fast. From the get-go, you can eliminate unauthorized changes, ensure compliance, create a foundation for Zero Trust, and close lingering security gaps. Over time, you’re building a stronger security posture for your whole organization. Positive security has the power to reduce your business risk while saving you ample time, money, and resources. 

Tried, trusted, and true—someone’s done this before you

After all the positive security benefits (heh), the next best part about this model is that you won’t be a guinea pig. The concept of denying by default isn’t new. Countless organizations have successfully switched to positive security and are running under increased protection already. 

That means we can learn from their wins: invest in strong infrastructure—physical and virtual—and choose a solution flexible enough to adapt to your business. In practice, that’s what makes a positive security model stick: the ability to enforce trust at the application and process level without slowing teams down.

With that strong foundation, you can build approval policies in a way that makes sense for your business, close gaps by solving for the last mile, and automate continuous learning for a security posture that’s smarter and stronger.

Lock down your assets with Carbon Black App Control

Using a trusted, positive security model, Carbon Black App Control protects the applications and processes your business relies on. By focusing on what’s allowed to run and blocking everything else, it safeguards endpoints, servers, and even fixed-function devices against threats that bypass traditional defenses. It’s built and deployed on the principles and best practices that help global enterprises and small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) alike secure quick wins from day one. 

It doesn’t rely on a library or “list” of files to keep up to date. Instead, it employs multiple approval methods that are built to adapt—giving your business an ever-evolving solution for an ever-evolving threat landscape.

If we’ve learned anything since 2020, it’s how fast things can change and how rapidly tech evolves with it. Threats are only going to keep up the pace, become more sophisticated, and more frequent. Let Carbon Black App Control be your assets’ armor. 

Watch the on-demand webinar for real-life scenarios, best practices for implementation, and even more insights into how positive security can transform your organization.