Firewalls are the most common source of configuration-related breaches or near misses, with 42% of security professionals reporting a breach or a near miss tied to firewall misconfigurations.
San Francisco, CA. July 7th, 2026 – Reach Security – the AI-Native Operating System for Security Controls – today launched Network Security Assurance, AI-driven defense for the network security controls that AI-powered adversaries target. The new offering gives security teams continuous visibility into how network security controls are configured, enforced, and drifting across their firewall, SASE, and adjacent network security enforcement points. Reach identifies rule issues, misconfigurations, weak security profiles, unintended access paths, and drift at the speed of AI, then prioritizes what matters most and remediates gaps before attackers can exploit them.
Today network security spans firewalls, WAFs, SASE, EDR firewalls, SD-WAN, and other enforcement points. Every rule, profile, and policy change can affect how traffic is allowed, blocked, inspected, or routed. Over time, as rules are altered, network security controls quietly drift away from security baselines. Risk gets buried in the rulebase. Stale rules stay live, shadowed rules obscure true exposure, and overly permissive any/any rules sneak in, leaving hidden paths to breach for AI-powered attackers.
The real-world impact of this problem was evident in recent research conducted by Reach: Configure → Drift → Breach → Repeat: Understanding the Cycle of Security Control Configuration Risk. When cybersecurity leaders were asked about security incidents or near misses experienced in the past 12 months due to misconfigurations in their existing security tools, 42% reported incidents originating in the firewall, making it the most frequently cited source of configuration‑related exposure.
Reach’s own customer telemetry data from the past year reinforces these findings. Drift is happening daily — the average Reach customer generates 13 drift alerts per day on average. Of those, 12 are tied to a real, risk-prioritized security exposure, and the most common source is the firewall. These are actual gaps between how controls are configured and how they should be configured based on the organization’s real threat profile. The data is sourced from real Reach customer environments and validates cybersecurity leaders’ perception that firewall misconfigurations are leading to security incidents.
“Our market research and customer telemetry align to tell a story of persistent risk residing in firewall misconfiguration,” said Garrett Hamilton, CEO and Co‑Founder of Reach Security. “As networks grow more complex and AI accelerates the speed and sophistication of attacks, organizations need continuous assurance that their network controls are configured, enforced, and operating as intended. Periodic audits and manual reviews are no longer enough,” he added.
Jonathan Brucato, Director of Security Operations at ECI, a partner of Reach Security, framed the problem: “The speed of change in modern network environments and AI-driven attacks have rendered static, point-in-time security reviews ineffective. Clients need to know that their controls are always correctly configured and enforced. Solutions like Reach provide the visibility and agility needed to detect drift and misconfigurations before they can be exploited.”
Key capabilities of Reach Network Security Assurance include:
- Continuously Validate Network Security Intent
Reach continuously validates whether network security controls are configured, prioritized, and enforced as intended across firewalls, SASE, and adjacent enforcement points. Teams can rapidly identify overly permissive access, ineffective enforcement, policy conflicts, and controls that no longer align with segmentation and least privilege objectives.
- Detect Network Security Drift and Hidden Exposure
Reach continuously analyzes network security controls to surface the drift and rulebase issues that gradually weaken defenses over time. Network security control drift is analyzed through a threat-informed lens, prioritizing the rules and misconfigurations adversaries are actually using, not just the ones that static rule hygiene might flag.
Security teams gain visibility into unused, shadowed, redundant, disabled, unreachable, and overly permissive rules, along with misconfigurations that create unintended access paths and operational risk.
- Constantly Harden and Remediate Network Security Controls
Reach goes beyond identifying network security gaps by helping organizations continuously harden and realign controls at operational scale – faster than AI adversaries can probe your environment.
Reach prioritizes the issues that matter most, maps findings directly to responsible enforcement points, and guides or automates remediation to reduce attack surface, restore intended policy enforcement, and correct configuration drift before it becomes exploitable.
As AI‑powered attacks accelerate, network security teams are facing a new reality: adversaries can now map network topologies, probe exposed services, and identify misconfigurations at machine speed. Attackers can test thousands of potential paths through a network in minutes, often spotting weaknesses long before defenders are aware they exist. The gap between a network control drifting out of compliance and that weakness being exploited has effectively collapsed. Defenders now need the same speed and scale, continuous visibility into the state of their firewalls and network controls, contextual understanding of how those controls interact, and the ability to rapidly identify and close exploitable openings. Reach Security’s AI‑native operations are designed for this new era, where AI‑driven attacks demand AI‑driven network defense that can detect and correct drift before it becomes an entry point.
Network Security Assurance is built for this new era, giving teams the continuous, real-time visibility they need to understand how every network control is behaving, where drift is emerging, and which gaps attackers could exploit first. Reach reasons over the true state of an organization’s network defenses and acts with precision.
Reach Security enables organizations to:
- Assess their defenses using Reach’s MastermindAI real‑time configuration intelligence.
- Identify and prioritize AI‑exploitable gaps before attackers find them.
- Harden posture by detecting and correcting drift before it becomes an exploitable misconfiguration.
- Gain continuous assurance that network security controls stay aligned to security intent.
For further information, download Reach Security’s research at https://www.reach.security/drift-research-report or visit the Network Security Assurance solution page at www.reach.security/solutions/network-security-assurance
About Reach Security
Reach Security is defining AI-native exposure management by bridging the gap between identifying security risks and taking action to fix them. The platform uncovers misconfigurations, control weaknesses, and other exposures, then drives prioritized, guided remediation at scale. By integrating with existing security tools, Reach delivers clarity, automation, and operational value in minutes - helping organizations reduce risk and maximize the impact of their current investments. For more information, please visit: www.reach.security
Press Contact
Paula Elliott
PR Managing Director
C8 Consulting Ltd
reachsecurity@c8consulting.co.uk
