The CISO's Seven-Layer Cake: A Modern Defense Blueprint for the Frontier AI Era

Modern enterprise defense is built in functional layers. Each layer has its own capabilities and its own prevention mode. Identity is the foundation on which every other layer depends. Traffic governance is the tier where policy does its heaviest work. Security operations sit at the top, correlating signals from everything beneath. Below is an illustration of this layered defense:The reference architecture that follows is the field guide for how these layers are actually deployed. No vendors are named. This is deliberate.