Digital Escalation Dominance: Why Cyber Success Means Staying Operational

Escalation dominance. It’s a foundational strategic principle that’s ancient in concept but modern in application.  

For centuries, escalation dominance decided the outcome of wars. The side that could keep its society functioning under stress gained leverage. The side that could not collapsed, even if its defenses were strong.

That same principle now governs digital infrastructure. In a world of constant cyber pressure, escalation dominance no longer comes from stopping every intrusion but from staying operational after attackers get inside.

This is the shift organizations face today. Modern cybersecurity is about preserving continuity. The ability to keep critical systems running, contain disruption, and make decisions under sustained attack now determines who stays in control.

This post explores how organizations can achieve digital escalation dominance by building resilience into their infrastructure, using adaptive perimeters and dynamic trust to outlast pressure instead of breaking under it.

Wars were won by keeping society running

For centuries, European states learned a hard lesson about war. You don’t win by collapsing your own society.

In conflicts like the Wars of Succession, powers such as Great Britain and Austria found ways to fight major wars without breaking life at home. Trade continued, governments functioned, and cities like London and Vienna kept running even as armies clashed elsewhere.

By keeping their economic and political centers stable, these countries could absorb pain longer than their rivals. War was expensive and draining, but civil society kept working.  

That endurance gave them leverage and, ultimately, advantage.

When France lost that balance in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, the fallout was swift. The army fell apart. The government collapsed, and Paris was surrounded. Civil unrest erupted into the Paris Commune.  

Once civilian systems stopped functioning, France lost any real power to negotiate. Surrender became inevitable.

That same strategic logic applies today. The battlefield has expanded from land and sea to digital infrastructure, but the rule has not changed.

Escalation dominance now depends on whether an organization can keep operating while under constant cyber pressure. Detection alone is not enough. The real test is whether the business keeps running after attackers get in.

For security teams, this raises the stakes. Their job is no longer just protecting networks in isolation. It’s preserving the organization’s ability to function during sustained attack.

For executives and policymakers, this changes how technology investments should be made. Resilience becomes the priority.  

The goal is not to prevent every breach, but to make sure the organization can withstand them and keep moving forward even when defenses get tested.

Today’s society runs on a fragile digital ecosystem

Modern society runs on a digital ecosystem that is far more fragile than most people realize.

Small disruptions don’t stay small for long. When critical systems fail, the effects stack up fast and spread wide.

• If logistics platforms go down, grocery stores and supply chains can empty out in just two to three days.  
• When banking or payment clearing systems stall, commerce stops almost immediately.  
• If energy systems or operational technology (OT) lose integrity, substations fail, pumps shut down, and entire regions can fall into blackout.

This kind of collapse only requires pressure at the right point in the system instead of a massive attack.

What happens at the national level also happens inside organizations. Fragile digital environments don’t degrade gracefully. They lock up.  

One failure triggers another. Teams lose the ability to respond before they fully understand what’s happening.

Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), has warned that foreign state-backed actors are already embedded inside critical infrastructure.  

These actors quietly map systems, maintain hidden access, and wait for the moment when disruption will have the greatest impact. As Burgess has described it, this allows “high-impact sabotage” on demand.

If an attacker triggers a cascade when an organization is distracted, understaffed, or under geopolitical pressure, they gain leverage without ever launching a visible attack.  

Control shifts not because defenses failed at the edge, but because the organization could not keep functioning once pressure began.

That is what strategic dominance looks like in the digital age.

How organizations can achieve digital escalation dominance

In a world where breaches are inevitable, escalation dominance is the ability to keep operating while under attack.  

That requires security architecture designed for pressure instead of perfection.

At a practical level, this comes down to two core principles working together: adaptive perimeters and dynamic trust connected by a continuous threat feedback loop.

1. Design adaptive perimeters around business priorities

Defense should start with the business, not the network.

Organizations need to clearly define which systems must stay online at all costs and which can safely degrade. A water pumping controller, trading platform, or production system carries very different risk than an internal portal or reporting tool.  

Making that distinction requires leadership alignment beyond technical input.

With priorities set, teams can segment the environment into small, self-contained zones. Access is based on identity and purpose instead of location. Each zone becomes a digital island, with clear rules and limited blast radius.

When an attack begins, these perimeters must adapt: boundaries tighten automatically, lateral movement is blocked, and critical systems stay operational. The perimeter moves with the threat instead of breaking under it.

A static perimeter breaks under pressure while an adaptive one shifts. It tightens automatically, blocks lateral movement, and limits spread, all while keeping critical systems running.

That ability to shift, reconfigure, and defend in real time is what escalation dominance looks like inside a modern organization.

2. Continuously reassess trust using real-time threat feedback

Static trust models fail under pressure. So do defenses that only react after damage is done.

Organizations need security systems that continuously reassess trust in real time. This happens through an automated threat feedback loop that evaluates access based on what is happening right now, not what was assumed yesterday.

The loop relies on three core inputs:

• Contextual boundaries defined by business policy ‍
• Asset criticality based on operational importance ‍
• Threat signals such as unusual behavior, traffic anomalies, or policy violations

These inputs combine to produce a dynamic trust score. Trust is not on or off. It rises and falls based on risk, context, and business impact.

3. Actively refine and enforce boundaries as conditions change

The real power of the feedback loop is action.

When suspicious behavior appears, the system automatically tightens access for that context. Boundaries shrink before a full attack takes hold. Risk is contained early, without waiting for human intervention.

When a confirmed threat emerges, enforcement is immediate. Critical systems isolate by default. Access drops to least privilege. Compromised endpoints are quarantined automatically.

Each attempt to breach the environment improves the system. Policies become more accurate, and trust becomes more precise. The organization is harder to destabilize over time.

This is how security teams prevent cascading failure like the kind that took down France in 1871.

4. Design operations to survive controlled disconnection

True resilience assumes that some systems will go dark during a cyberattack.

This idea is now formalized in guidance like CI Fortify, published by the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD). CI Fortify is clear about what resilience looks like when systems are under real stress:

• Organizations must be able to isolate critical OT and IT systems on purpose. Vital services should keep running even if parts of the environment are offline for weeks or longer. That doesn't happen by chance. It requires manual workarounds that are planned, documented, and practiced before a crisis begins. ‍
• Organizations need operational sovereignty. Critical operations and skilled staff must be able to stay onshore and self-sufficient during geopolitical tension or supply-chain disruption. Heavy dependence on offshore providers, unclear jurisdictions, or weaker security standards creates risk that shows up fast during a crisis.

For organizations, this guidance turns into clear design choices:

• Design for controlled disconnection, not just constant connectivity.
• Know which partners and suppliers you can operate without.
• Prepare for scenarios where cloud platforms, managed service providers (MSPs), or even identity systems are unavailable.

Just as resilient countries kept food, water, and governance running during war, resilient organizations keep their most critical digital systems operating even after defenses get breached.

Resilience is the new escalation dominance

Today, escalation dominance no longer means stopping every attack. That goal is unrealistic. What matters now is what happens after an attacker gets in.

True dominance comes from staying operational when the perimeter is breached. The organization keeps working. Critical systems stay online. Decision-making continues.  

Disruption is contained instead of spreading.

This changes the role of cyber defenders. They’re not just protecting networks but also protecting continuity.  

Their job is to keep the business running under pressure, so an attack becomes a problem to manage, not a crisis that brings everything to a halt.

For executives and policymakers, it means that the resilience of digital infrastructure now determines whether an organization absorbs disruption or collapses under it.  

With this mindset, security investments are about building an architecture that can survive stress. Organizations must plan for failure and pressure and never assume perfect conditions.

When pressure peaks, the organization keeps operating. That continuity is resilience in its most practical form.

Try Illumio Insights today to see how you can detect risk faster, isolate threats instantly, and stay operational even after attackers get inside.