Penetration testing is one of the most effective ways to help determine an organization’s risk posture. Other standard processes such as gap assessments, audits, architecture reviews, and vulnerability management offer great value, but there is still no substitute for penetration testing. Done right, it means where rubber meets the road, and it serves as a situational barometer for aligning security defenses with ever-evolving cyberthreats and budgetary realities.
Essentially, penetration testing falls under the umbrella of ethical hacking, in which simulated attackers attempt to identify and exploit key vulnerabilities within an organization’s security environment. Gaining this kind of visibility highlights the link between cyber and business risks as AI-powered attacks on corporate networks grow rapidly.
For example, the rise of ChatGPT has been well-documented as a game-changer in cybercrime, democratizing highly sophisticated tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that allow average adversarial attackers to results can be increased. An effective penetration testing program that continues to increase the volume and velocity of attacks by allowing mundane malicious hackers to carry out attacks on an ongoing basis, helping to mitigate the severe business impact of a breach. will increase in importance. Victims will lose an average of $9.4 million per breach in 2022, according to IBM.
Exacerbating the problem are the weaknesses of public and private sector security postures. In the SANS Institute’s 2022 Ethical Hacking Survey, “Think Like a Hacker — Inside the Minds & Methods of Modern Adversaries,” more than 75% of respondents said that organizations with effective network detection and response capabilities I found that they answered that they were few or only some. Attack in real time. Additionally, nearly 50% said most organizations have moderate or very poor ability to detect and prevent cloud and application-specific breaches. It is clear that more must be done to keep the balance of power away from the enemy.
Initiate penetration testing that can provide unparalleled contextual awareness to refine cyber defense, threat remediation, and recovery processes within a comprehensive risk management architecture. Organizations conducting penetration testing programs at scale should keep the following basic principles in mind to maximize effectiveness:
goal-oriented mindset
About ten years ago, my longtime colleague and close friend Josh Abraham developed a compelling case for the increasing adoption of a goal-oriented approach to pentesting. I started with a question.
The answer was a set of clear, predefined goals that didn’t revolve around the tactical processes and technical workflows most associated with penetration testing at the time. Contrary to popular opinion throughout the cybersecurity community, identifying surface-level vulnerabilities has never been the ethical hacker’s golden goose.
wait, really?
Yes — Penetration testing and vulnerability assessment are not two sides of the same coin. While the latter is static and lacks context, penetration testing is the manual testing of an organization’s defenses to steal data or achieve levels of unauthorized access to avoid fundamental business risks. designed to reveal The endgame isn’t about identifying the actual vulnerabilities, it’s about identifying the door those vulnerabilities opened and the business consequences of allowing an adversary to walk through undetected.
To this day, Abraham’s goal-oriented approach has emerged as a fundamental pillar of penetration testing. For ethical hacking to provide the most value, it should have predefined goals and be structured around the organization’s most vulnerable business disruption areas to reflect worst-case scenario attacks. I have. Ethical hackers target these areas to gauge the level of cyber resilience of an organization, and how pockets of low-risk vulnerabilities combine to create a comprehensive high-risk scenario that puts your business at risk. Clarify what you want to create a scenario for.
- For a major TV provider, a ransomware attack could shut down nationally televised sports broadcasts and cost billions of dollars in lost advertising revenue.
- In the case of water treatment plants, it could be a state attack that pollutes city-wide water supplies and creates a public health crisis.
- For federal agencies, it could be an insider threat attack that leaks national security information to a foreign adversary for financial gain.
Regardless of what the apocalyptic scenario looks like, penetration testing provides a solid understanding of what an attacker’s ultimate goal is and how it can damage your business. You have to start with It’s the only real way to find the right vulnerabilities in the right context to mitigate business risk.
Connect the dots of vulnerability
As the line between cyber and business risk blurs each year, pen testing has emerged as a key component of proactive risk prioritization. It gives organizations greater visibility into their risk posture with probability scales and financial projections linked to different areas of their security environment. Armed with these high-level insights, CISOs have the foresight to make informed decisions by weighing the business risk of potential attacks against the likelihood that they actually occur. increase. Then, allocate security resources accordingly to increase your ROI and increase your protection.
The clear information and reassurance provided by penetration testing also helps demystify the complexities of the cyber threat landscape, translating cyber risk into practical business terms that resonate with executives and boards. With real-life, illustrative stories from recent penetration testing efforts, cyber resilience leaders have the collective buy-in across enterprise leadership to ensure security remains the top priority for their organizations. It becomes much easier to articulate risks in a facilitating way.
It is important to remember that regardless of the effectiveness of your penetration testing program, there will always be gray areas and shaky decisions regarding risk prioritization. Penetration testing helps CISOs make as many informed decisions as possible. Otherwise, they are blindly seeing what the real business risks are.
iron sharpens iron
Just like cybersecurity is a team sport, so is penetration testing. Essentially, a penetration testing program applies targeted attacks (the same her TTPs that sophisticated attackers use) to guide how organizations build their defenses. Penetration testing can also be a precursor to red team exercises. For more mature organizations that already conduct regular penetration testing, the red team exercise includes threat hunters and security operations center analysts as the red attack team and the blue defense team. And as we learned in elementary school and cybersecurity, when you blend both you get the color purple and the team purple.
The concept of purple teaming is often misunderstood. It is not a single team of attack specialists and hunters working together. Rather, it is a verb that describes how red and blue factions can work together to expand knowledge, sharpen strategy, and increase operational efficiency. On a superficial level it’s not very obvious, but blue can help red in the same way red helps blue.
For example, collaborative intelligence sharing provides ethical hackers with more perspective on how a particular TTP was identified. This way, the red team can adjust their approach towards their next attempt to be more lethal. This makes the blue team stronger. Think of it like iron sharpening iron. Ultimately, everyone benefits.
There is no immediate decline in AI adoption on both sides of the cybersecurity perimeter. AI-powered attackers are here to stay, and what he knew about AI-based attacks two weeks ago may not make sense today. This reality heightens the importance of implementing scalable pentesting as a core component of his modern CISO’s arsenal. With purple teaming, risk prioritization, and clearly defined goals, impactful penetration testing and red teaming are the ultimate source of empowerment to combat adversarial threat actors.
