The Best Defense Starts Before the First Serve - D1 Defend D1 Defend

What the 2026 US Open Can Remind Businesses About Cybersecurity Preparation    

When a player steps onto the court at the US Open, the match may be just beginning. The preparation isn’t. Long before the first serve, players have spent countless hours studying opponents, practicing positioning, strengthening fundamentals, and preparing for what happens when a match doesn’t unfold exactly as expected. By the time the ball is in play, much of the work that influences the outcome has already happened. Business cybersecurity works in much the same way.

The best defense starts before the first serve.

It starts before the suspicious email arrives. Before an employee connects from an unfamiliar network. Before an important system becomes unavailable. Before information needs to be recovered. Most importantly, it starts before a technology issue has an opportunity to become a business disruption.

You Don’t Build a Defense in the Middle of the Point  

Imagine a tennis player waiting until a serve is already flying across the net to decide how they’re going to return it, that’s not much of a strategy. Yet businesses sometimes approach technology in exactly that way. When everything appears to be working, maintenance can be postponed. Backups are assumed to be available. Updates can wait until another day. Employee awareness training moves further down the priority list. Access permissions accumulate as employees, vendors, and applications come and go. Nothing may seem urgent. Until suddenly it is.

Reactive IT can help solve problems after they appear but proactive technology management is about reducing the likelihood that those problems interrupt the business in the first place that distinction matters because technology problems rarely remain technology problems. When a critical system goes down, employees may not be able to work. Communication can slow. Customers may experience delays. Important processes can stop. Cybersecurity preparation isn’t simply about preventing an attack.

It’s about protecting the flow of the business.

Strong Defense Is Built on Strong Fundamentals  

Elite athletes spend enormous amounts of time practicing fundamentals. The movements may not be exciting. The repetition may not make the highlight reel. But when the pressure increases, those fundamentals matter. Cybersecurity has fundamentals too. Keeping systems current, protecting accounts with multi-factor authentication, managing employee access, securing business email, maintaining reliable backups, protecting remote connections, and helping employees recognize suspicious activity may not sound revolutionary. That’s exactly the point.

Good cyber hygiene isn’t supposed to be revolutionary. It’s supposed to be consistent. Each individual practice strengthens a different part of the technology environment. Together, they create layers of protection around the information, people, and operations the organization depends on. Businesses don’t become more resilient because of one extraordinary security decision. They become more resilient because good decisions are made consistently.

Your Employees Are Already Part of the Defense  

Even the best strategy still depends on the person holding the racquet. Cybersecurity is no different. Businesses can invest in sophisticated technology, but employees still make hundreds of decisions throughout the workweek. They open emails. Approve requests. Access cloud applications. Share information. Communicate with customers and vendors. Work from different locations. Sign into business systems. Those everyday interactions matter that doesn’t mean every employee needs to become a cybersecurity specialist. It means employees should have enough awareness to recognize when something deserves a second look.

Does this request make sense? Was I expecting this attachment? Why am I suddenly being asked to change payment information? Am I actually on the website I intended to visit? Should I verify this another way before continuing?

A few seconds of thoughtful verification can sometimes prevent hours—or even days—of unnecessary business disruption. The objective isn’t to make employees afraid of technology. It’s to give them the confidence to use it responsibly.

The Court Has Changed    

The modern workplace no longer has clear physical boundaries: Employees work from home, executives answer emails while traveling, teams connect from hotels, airports, conferences, customer locations, and mobile devices, and business has become increasingly mobile, and cybersecurity has to account for that reality. The goal shouldn’t be to restrict employees every time they leave the office. It should be to make sure appropriate protection travels with them. Secure remote access, properly managed devices, multi-factor authentication, and clear expectations around how company information is accessed can help employees remain productive without unnecessarily increasing business risk.

In other words, the court has gotten bigger. The defense needs to adjust with it.

Good Defense Includes Knowing How to Recover  

Even the best tennis players lose points. What matters is how they respond to the next one.

Businesses should approach cybersecurity with the same understanding. No technology environment is perfect, and no organization can eliminate every possible disruption. Systems can fail. Vendors can experience outages. Employees can make mistakes. Cyber incidents can happen even when good security measures are in place.

That’s why preparation cannot end with prevention.

A resilient organization should understand how it will respond when something doesn’t go according to plan.

• Can critical information be restored?
• Are backups actually working?
• Which systems need to return first?
• Does the team know whom to contact?
• Can essential business functions continue while recovery is underway?

Those questions take cybersecurity beyond protecting systems and into something much more important:

Business continuity.

The objective isn’t simply to stop every problem.

It’s to maintain the ability to operate when circumstances change.