The Cybersecurity Poverty Line: Why it exists and why Sophos exists to erase it

Sophos outlines the concept of the "cybersecurity poverty line," arguing that most organizations lack the strategic capability (not just tools or budget) to operate effective security programs; the paper describes four dimensions that drive this gap (money, expertise, capability, influence) and explains how agentic AI can either widen inequity or serve as the means to democratize CISO-grade decisions. Sophos positions its integrated, AI-supervised approach—combining endpoint, network, email, cloud, identity, MDR, and threat intelligence with human oversight—as a way to deliver strategic capability at scale and make strong cybersecurity accessible across organizations of all sizes.