In order to develop a proactive security strategy that can potentially save an organization millions of dollars per year, it's essential to define clear security goals, create a threat model and mitigation plan, embrace proactive threat hunting, instill secure coding best practices, and leverage log and event data for continuous security monitoring. By shifting security left and addressing potential threats early, organizations can prevent them from growing into bigger issues that could cause significant damage, ultimately strengthening their overall defense against cyber attacks and making it more difficult for attackers to succeed.