Optimize your security performance and streamline complex controls with Cymulate

The acceleration of digital transformation is paralleled by a rise in cyber risks. As the average breach cost also continues to rise – reaching $4.4 million this year, according to the latest IBM Cost of a Data Breach report, a 2.6% increase from last year, and a 13% leap since 2020 – the importance of optimizing cybersecurity to maximize the impact of invested resources is crucial.

The US government’s Cyber Defense Agency recommends emulating attacks to validate security posture resilience with automated threat testing. Unfortunately, as lamented by a CISA official talking to Bloomberg, the current trend among organizations is to simply deploy expensive cybersecurity tools and assume they are doing the job.

This is a costly and risky option. IBM’s Cyber Resilient Organization Report reports that an organization uses an average of 45 security solutions from 13 vendors. Each of these solutions has its own set of configurations, policies, and control settings, making it overly complex to assess their individual performance. Even worse, the unmanageable amount of data produced degrades analysts’ ability to detect threats and weaknesses and often fails to include up-to-date emerging threats, potentially leaving the system exposed.

Because of these reasons alone, it’s important for organizations to lean on technologies that are integrating automated attack technologies, like our partner Cymulate does. As seen at Camp Secure Sense, Cymulate does a great job at mitigating cyber risks, and can be looked at from both operational and technical viewpoints:

Operationally, a comprehensive attack emulation platform:

1. Preserves business continuity – The continuous nature of assessments prevents downtime due to delayed or untested inadequate patching. Up-to-date Immediate Intelligence Threat capabilities rapidly assess cyber resilience against emerging threats without interfering with operations and provide preemptive measures.
2. Optimizes the Security vs. Operability trade-off – Ideally, operability requires maximum flexibility. Conversely, maximum security implies total insulation from the external world. Automated attack emulation technology generates quantified, fact-based, and continuously updated cybersecurity data required to achieve the delicate state of equilibrium between operational flexibility and threat exposure.
3. Reduces cyber employees’ burnout and churns – By reducing the number of false-positive alerts, rationalizing the tool stack, and automating most repetitive tasks, attack emulation technology reduces the load of tasks with a negative impact on cybersecurity staff, freeing their time to conduct more high-level risk analysis and improving their job satisfaction level, thus reducing employee turnover.
4. Facilitates cyber due diligence in M&A – Uncovering cyber-risks in an M&A negotiation cannot be achieved by evaluating past cyber history or filling out questionnaires. Deloitte’s Due Diligence for Mergers and Acquisitions through a cybersecurity lens advisory document recommends running a comprehensive set of attack emulations and analyzing the results.
5. Reduces cyber-insurance costs – Cyber insurance companies are slated to shift their requirements to include documenting the in-context effectiveness of their security controls and security drift prevention. Comprehensive attack emulation technology goes beyond upcoming requirements.
6. Smoothers the investment process – As cybersecurity ranks second among the top 5 concerns of potential investors, access to an in-depth, quantified, continuously updated evaluation of your cyber resilience facilitates the process.
7. Is assessment compliance future-proof – Regulators’ attempts to ensure the regulations remain technologically relevant are shifting towards including assessment and security posture consolidation. Attack emulation technology automatically generates comprehensive risk assessment reports with a level of detail and documentation superior to the current – and near-future – regulators’ demands.

From a technical operative viewpoint, a comprehensive attack emulation technology:

1. Optimizes existing defenses – It validates the efficacy of SIEM and SOAR tools by correlating the number of production-safe attacks they detected, preempted, or mitigated.
2. Maximizes in-depth visibility in tool stack – It measures existing tools’ effectiveness, identifies security gaps, and provides actionable remediation recommendations.
3. Rationalizes cybersecurity tool stack – By providing 360° visibility into each tool’s effectiveness in detecting, stopping, or mitigating production-safe attacks, Cymulate enables you to eliminate tools with overlapping capabilities and define which capabilities are still missing.
4. Prioritizes patching and reduces emergency patching loads – Attack emulations precisely identify vulnerabilities critical in context. Attack-Based Vulnerability Management (ABVM) prioritizes patching based on actual risks to a specific environment, filtering those compensated for by security controls. The streamlined patching schedule lightens the load on the IT team.
5. Prevents security drift – A known healthy security posture based periodic validation can slowly or abruptly worsen. Cymulate immediately detects security drifts, enabling preemptive mitigation before the security posture shifts to a bad state.
6. Provides metrics and traceability – Cybersecurity strategies are typically based on guesstimates based on adherence to best practices. Cymulate’s algorithm calculates your security score using industry-recognized standards – NIST Risk Management Framework, CSVSS v3.0 Calculator, and Microsoft’s DREAD – correlated with the percentage of launched production-safe attacks detected and deflected. The resulting numerical score is a reliable base to harmonize baselines and monitor trending.
7. Reduces dependency on manual methods – Pen testing or red teaming are resource-heavy and costly, and their test results quality depends on their skills. With AI/ML offensive tools available to cyber-attackers, proficiency in every attack tactic, technique, and procedure listed on MITRE and other repositories and emerging threats updates is required. Cymulate eliminates reliance on manual validation.

Cymulate’s comprehensive automated attack emulation platform provides off-the-shelf, customizable solutions for Attack Surface Management (ASM), Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) with end-to-end, individual, or partial attack route security control efficacy assessment, daily updated Immediate Threat assessment, and IoCs, Attack Based Vulnerability Management, and more.

Interactive default and customizable dashboards and reports provide an at-a-glance evaluation of the security posture, with at-a-click access to detailed information and actionable mitigation guidelines. Cymulate’s integrated ticketing also facilitates remediation management.

Interested in seeing Cymulate in action? We’re working directly with the experts at Cymulate to bring you a no obligation 14-day free trial for qualified customers. Get started on your free trial here.

We are giving away a $100 VISA giftcard over on our LinkedIn Page. All you have to do is comment one or more of your security priorities on the post here.

Interested in Chatting with a Secure Sense Security Professional about Cymulate?

There’s no better time than the present to enlist help for your security needs. Available across Canada, our team of specialists are eager and ready to learn how to become that trusted extension of your security team. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us at 866-999-7506 or shoot us an email at contactus@securesense.ca.

Secure Sense is the security provider that cares. We are a team of experts with a passion for IT and protecting your organization is what motivates us daily. If you have questions or want to learn more about how we can improve your organization’s security, and our services or just want to chat about security please give us a shout. Follow along throughout the month of October as we discuss all things cybersecurity for Cyber Security Awareness Month.

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