It's good that they realized that doing your job does not guarantee anything. Going far and beyond you job description also doesn't guarantee anything, although you may increase your changes of survival. There are probably diminishing returns here.
Networking inside the company, if it is big enough, will also increase the chances of survival, as you may be able to jump ship to another group, or even get some advance warning.
Still, the best insurance is to stash money for rainy days and have the resumé up-to-date. As soon as the weather starts to turn (which you can detect in many, but not all cases), jump ship. Company has zero loyalty to employees, so theirs should not be much higher than zero either if they want to be fair.