While the Ads Are Still Running

From Cigarette ads to warning labels; Cybersecurity's Next Phase

Written by: Boyd J. Levitt

12/15/2025

Imagine this...

It’s the late 1950s. The air smells like cologne and tobacco. Men in pressed suits lean against chrome-lined cars. A radio hums somewhere nearby. Cigarette smoke hangs in the sunlight like it belongs there.

No warnings. No labels. Zero urgency.

A man laughs, taps the ash from his cigarette, takes one more drag, and collapses in front of you. The cigarette slips from his hand and lands on the pavement, still burning.

No one calls it a crisis. No one calls it negligence. Someone shrugs and says, “Bad heart.”

The cigarette keeps burning.

If this were the 1950s, I’d be pitching you cigarettes with a smile and a handshake. Everyone else was doing it. The government wasn’t stopping anyone. Doctors were even lending their credibility to the ads. And the people who knew better weren’t in a hurry to make a fuss just yet. That’s how risk works before regulation catches up. It feels ordinary. Acceptable. Safe enough.

Cybersecurity is sitting in that same moment right now.

When Cigarettes Were “Just How Things Were” In the 1950s, smoking wasn’t controversial. It was woven into everyday life. Cigarette ads filled magazines, lined highways, and ran on television. Doctors appeared in those ads. Real doctors, in white coats, recommending brands by name. It all felt harmless because it was legal. What tends to get forgotten is that by 1950, medical studies were already linking smoking to lung cancer.

By the early 1950s, the U.S. government knew. The science existed. The data was there. The harm was documented. What didn’t exist was enforcement. There were no serious penalties. No advertising bans. No urgency.

So businesses did what businesses usually do when the rules are quiet. They assumed that if something were truly dangerous, someone would step in. That assumption held for years.

In 1964, Surgeon General Dr. Luther Terry released the first official report stating that smoking caused cancer and heart disease. Even then, the response was gradual. Warning labels arrived in 1965. Advertising restrictions followed later. Television ads were not banned until 1971. The real reckoning didn’t come until decades later.

In 1998, the tobacco industry signed the Master Settlement Agreement, agreeing to pay 206 billion dollars to U.S. states. The penalty wasn’t about new information. It was about waiting too long to act. Smoking was legal before it was regulated. That didn’t make it safe.

Cybersecurity Feels Uncomfortably Familiar Today’s data environment feels very similar.

Companies collect enormous amounts of information. Customer data. Employee records. Financial and health information. Some of it is essential to do business. Some of it is collected simply because it can be. Breaches happen constantly. Headlines come and go. Customers are increasingly numb to them. Enforcement still feels uneven enough that it’s easy to believe the real consequences will land somewhere else.

So leaders say things like, “We’ve never had a breach,” or “We’re not a big enough target,” or “We’ll deal with it when the laws change.” Those aren’t reckless statements. They’re human ones. And they’re the same assumptions industries have made every time regulation eventually caught up. Just like smoking, the government has known this was a problem for a long time.

HIPAA was passed in 1996. PCI standards followed in the early 2000s. The Federal Trade Commission has brought cybersecurity enforcement actions since the mid-2000s. For years, enforcement was scattered. Cybersecurity lived in the category of best practice instead of obligation. That line is disappearing. GDPR changed the global conversation in 2018. The Equifax settlement in 2019 put a real dollar figure on failure. In 2023, the SEC made cybersecurity disclosure a leadership issue, not an IT one, with strict timelines and executive accountability.

Those weren’t isolated events. They were warning labels. Regulation never starts with enforcement. It ends with it.

Why 2026 Is the Line in the Sand 2026 is not a future horizon

It is the point at which expectations harden. By 2026, comprehensive privacy and data protection laws will be fully in force across a majority of U.S. states. Regulators will no longer be asking whether organizations are preparing. They will be asking whether controls already exist.

In 2026, enforcement shifts from tolerance to proof. Organizations will be expected to demonstrate why data is collected, how it is protected, who has access to it, how vendors are governed, and how quickly incidents are detected and contained. Documentation will matter more than intention. Readiness will matter more than effort. At the federal level, agencies will not be waiting for a single national privacy law.

The FTC will continue using its authority to penalize inadequate security practices. The SEC will enforce cybersecurity as a governance and disclosure obligation. HHS will escalate HIPAA penalties. State attorneys general will coordinate enforcement actions across jurisdictions.

This is how regulation actually arrives. Not with an announcement, but with expectation.

When laws change, timelines disappear. Why This Is No Longer a Technical Conversation For boards and executives, cybersecurity is no longer an IT discussion. It is a governance issue. Regulators do not ask whether leadership cared about security. They ask what oversight existed, what controls were approved, what reporting mechanisms were in place, and how prepared the organization was to respond.

The companies that get hit hardest are rarely the most malicious. They are the ones who cannot demonstrate preparedness. The absence of enforcement is not the absence of risk. Waiting for a clean enforcement moment almost guarantees reacting under pressure, with limited options and very public consequences. The cheapest compliance is the compliance you build before you are required to.

How Diverse CTI Is Different and Why That Matters

Most IT and cybersecurity firms lead with tools, acronyms, and fear. They overwhelm clients with dashboards, technical language, and worst-case scenarios, then disappear behind a ticketing system when something goes wrong.

Diverse CTI was built in reaction to that model. Diverse CTI exists to help businesses protect what matters most before regulation, enforcement, or crisis makes the decision for them. Cybersecurity should be clear, human, and built around trust, not jargon.

Diverse CTI starts with understanding how a business actually runs, where risk truly lives, and what leadership needs to see and own. When issues arise, response is immediate and human. 24/7 monitoring is not a feature. It is a responsibility. Clients are spoken to plainly. They know what is happening, why it matters, and what comes next. Diverse CTI stays present.

Controls are documented. Vendors are reviewed. Incident plans are tested.

Executives have visibility long before regulators ask questions. Organizations are rarely punished for trying. They are punished for being unable to prove they were prepared. Diverse CTI exists to make sure that proof is already in place. In short, the mission is not to sell security. It is to help organizations become compliant by design, not compliant by force.

A Final Thought for Leadership

Cybersecurity still feels optional in many rooms. That alone should raise concern. Cigarette companies didn’t think they were standing on the edge of a reckoning either. They were simply operating within the norms of their time.

History is clear about what comes next. Organizations can prepare deliberately now, on their own terms. Or they can react later, publicly and under pressure. For leaders who want clarity on where they stand heading into 2026, that conversation matters now.

Grayson Bagby

Vice President of Business Development Diverse CTI

Direct Line: 405-981-1603

If this were still the 1950s, we’d shake hands, straighten our jackets, and carry on as usual. The ads would keep running, the warnings would stay quiet, and there would always be time to deal with it later. But we know how that story ends. The difference today is that you don’t have to learn the lesson the hard way.

You can ask the right questions now, get clear on where you actually stand, and make calm, informed decisions before anyone forces your hand. If you want an honest conversation about what 2026 will expect of your organization and what it takes to be ready without panic or posturing, that’s the conversation Diverse CTI exists to have.