CISA's "Clean" Audit Reveals Why Your Company May Already Be Compromised

By INP² | Bridging Cybersecurity and Executive Strategy

Picture this: Federal cybersecurity experts spend days hunting through your company's networks, searching every corner for signs of hackers. They find nothing. No malware. No ransomware. No foreign adversaries lurking in your systems. You'd breathe a sigh of relief, wouldn't you?

You shouldn't.

What Happened: The Story Behind CISA Alert AA25-212A

In July 2025, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and U.S. Coast Guard released a troubling report about a recent "proactive threat hunt" at a critical U.S. infrastructure organization. This wasn't a response to a known breach. It was a preemptive security checkup, a fire drill for cyberattacks.

The good news? CISA found no hackers in the company's systems.

The alarming news? They discovered that if hackers had gotten in. They could have taken over the entire operation without anyone knowing. Here's what the federal investigators uncovered:

Admin passwords stored in plain text scripts  Imagine leaving the master keys to your building in a text file labeled "BUILDING_KEYS.txt" on every security guard's desk. That's essentially what this organization did with their computer systems.

Shared administrator accounts across hundreds of computers One stolen password could unlock every workstation in the company. It's like having the same key for every door, safe, and filing cabinet in your organization.

IT staff could directly access factory floor systems Workers checking email could accidentally click a malicious link and give hackers direct access to the systems controlling physical operations like HVAC, manufacturing equipment, or safety systems.

Missing security logs The organization had virtually no way to detect if someone was snooping around their systems. It's like having security cameras that aren't actually recording.

Translation: This company wasn't breached because attackers hadn't found them yet, not because they were secure.

Business Impact: Why This Should Keep You Awake

While this organization wasn't attacked, the vulnerabilities CISA discovered are exactly what cyber-criminals exploit in the $5.13 million average ransomware attacks happening every day. Here's what the same weaknesses have cost other companies:

Revenue Destruction: The average cost of a ransomware attack in 2024 was $5.13M, with costs growing 574% from 2019. Unplanned downtime alone can run as high as $125,000 per hour, and the average downtime from ransomware is 24 days.

Operational Devastation: When attackers move from your email systems to your Operational Technology (the computers that control your factory equipment, HVAC, or safety systems), they can literally shut down your physical operations. Colonial Pipeline paid $4.4 million in bitcoin after receiving a ransom note and shut down fuel supplies across the Eastern U.S. for nearly a week.

Reputational Carnage: Weak passwords are the cause for over 80% of organizational data breaches, and for the second consecutive year, phishing and stolen or compromised credentials were the most prevalent attack vectors accounting for 15% and 16% of all breaches, respectively. When Change Healthcare suffered a ransomware attack in 2024, UHG paid a $22 million ransom and has since recorded over $1.6 billion in breach-related costs.

The Invisible Threat: Because the organization couldn't properly monitor user activity, they would never know if attackers were stealing data, planting backdoors, or preparing for a massive attack. Breaches that used stolen or compromised credentials took the longest to resolve, at 88 days which is nearly three months of bleeding money and reputation.

Executive Action: The Questions Your Board Should Ask

This isn't just a technical problem requiring technical solutions. It's a leadership challenge that starts in the C-suite. Here are the questions that should be on your next board agenda or executive staff meeting:

Credential Security Reality Check:

• Are any of our administrator passwords stored in scripts or shared between systems?

• Do we use Microsoft LAPS or equivalent tools to ensure every computer has unique admin credentials?

• When was the last time we verified that no one is sharing passwords?
  

Operational Technology Protection:

• Can someone who gets tricked by a phishing email in our office environment access our factory floor, HVAC, or safety systems?

• Do we have properly secured 'bastion hosts'. These are specialized computers that act as the only gateway to our critical operational systems?

• Are our IT networks completely separated from our Operational Technology networks and are the connections monitored and logged?
  

Detection Capabilities:

• If someone stole our admin credentials today, how long would it take us to notice?

• Are we collecting detailed logs from every computer, including what commands users run and what they access? How long are those logs retained? And who has access to modify them?

• Can our security team actually detect unauthorized lateral movement across our network?
  

Legacy Security Weaknesses:

• Are our web servers still accepting outdated SSL/TLS connections that can be exploited?

• Do our database systems enforce strong password requirements, or are we still allowing passwords under 15 characters?
  

If your CIO or CISO hesitates on any answer, congratulations you've found your highest-priority security investment.

Timeline: Why Yesterday Was Too Late

Highest urgency. Here's why waiting is not an option:

These aren't sophisticated zero-day vulnerabilities requiring nation-state actors. Stolen credentials on criminal forums cost as little as $10, while cybersecurity budgets grew again in 2024, with organizations now spending almost $1,100 per user. Attackers are buying the keys to your kingdom for the price of lunch while you're spending a thousand dollars per employee on security tools.

The vulnerabilities CISA found are foundational security gaps. The digital equivalent of leaving your front door wide open. Compromised credentials remain the second most common perceived attack vector, although the percentage of attacks that used this approach dropped from 29% in 2024 to 23% in 2025, but stolen credentials were the #1 attacker action in 2023/24, and the breach vector for 80% of web app attacks.

These issues were not caught by traditional security tools. They were only discovered through manual federal investigation. Your antivirus software, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems will not warn you about these problems. This is proactive understanding not reactive crisis management where finger pointing and blame will inevitably begin.

Budget Implications: The Cost of Action vs. Inaction

The math is, but clear. Here's what implementing CISA's recommendations costs for different organization sizes:

Large Enterprise (1,000+ employees):

Security Investment	Implementation Cost	Cost of Ignoring
Unique Admin Credentials	$0-$5K (Microsoft LAPS is free)	$5.13M average ransomware attack
Comprehensive Logging & SIEM	$50K-$200K annually	$4.88M average data breach cost
IT/Operational Technology Segmentation	$100K-$500K (network redesign)	$125,000 per hour of downtime
Secure Bastion Hosts	$25K-$100K (setup + training)	Complete operational shutdown risk
Modern Authentication (MFA)	$3-$15 per user monthly	80% of breaches prevented

Small to Medium Business (25-500 employees):

Security Investment	SMB Implementation Cost	Cost of Ignoring
Unique Admin Credentials	$0-$2K (Microsoft LAPS is free)	SMBs' average annual losses: $1.4 million
Basic SIEM/Logging Solution	$10K-$50K annually	SMBs spend $826-$653,587 per incident
Network Segmentation	$1,500-$4,000 (hardware firewalls)	Business-ending operational shutdown
Managed Security Services	$30+ per user monthly	Complete compromise of customer data
Multi-Factor Authentication	$3-$6 per user monthly	82% of ransomware attacks target <1,000 employees

The Reality Check: Businesses globally spend an average of 13.2 percent of their IT budgets on cybersecurity. The total cost of implementing all CISA's recommendations might reach $1 million for a large organization, or $50K-$150K for an SMB. The average cost of ignoring them? Between $5.5M and $6M in 2025 for a single successful attack.

Consider financial organizations shelled out an average of $2.58 million to fully recover after a ransomware attack, up from $2.23 million in 2023, while healthcare remains the costliest sector when breaches occur. In 2024, the average healthcare breach cost was $9.77 million.

Small Business Reality: 55% of ransomware hit businesses with fewer than 100 employees, while another 75% of attacks targeted companies making less than $50 million in revenue. Yet only 14% of SMBs have a regularly tested cyber security plan in place.

The Bottom Line

This wasn't a breach. It's a preview. CISA's federal investigators found fundamental security gaps that manual inspection caught in days while the organization's security tools had missed them entirely or they were risk accepted vulnerabilities by someone with authority without the understanding of the impact of their decision.

The question isn't whether your organization has similar blind spots. It's how quickly you'll find and fix them before someone else does.

Your next step: Schedule a security review focusing specifically on the five areas CISA identified. Because in cybersecurity, the most dangerous attack is the one you never see coming.

Ready to translate your cybersecurity challenges into executive strategy? Follow INP² for a comprehensive assessments that speaks your language of business impact, not technical complexity or fear.