We see, hear and read about it every day: hackers breaching defences, stealing data and exploiting companies’ vulnerabilities. We are no longer asking ‘what if I get hacked?’ – rather, we wonder ‘when will I get hacked?’. We cannot let our fear of being phished or infected with malware prevent us from doing our jobs to the best of our ability. Instead, we need to understand the cyber security landscape today – what kinds of hackers exist, how preventative methods like ethical hacking can backfire and how our interconnected culture will continue to contribute to hackers winning the ‘cyber war’ if we don't rethink our readiness approach, argues Keenan Skelly of Circadence. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd