The Impact Continuous Security Validation has on Security Operations and Incident Response

For organizations that have limited internal resources and security staff, their focus is primarily on attack prevention. The set of automated security validation rules needs to be simple to use and deploy. At a minimum, the security control validation must be automated and provide prescriptive mitigation roadmaps to optimize security control resiliency, as well as threat intelligence operationalization.

For more mature organizations with greater security resources and infrastructure, the benefit of incorporating a wider range of extended security posture management modules enables additional functionalities such as:

‣ Threat hunting and incident response – a module automating launching thousands of production-safe attacks coupled with real-time, on-site response by cyber-defenders enable the identification of high-risk vulnerabilities, their timely patching and easy to set up response practices.

‣ Optimizing and rationalizing the existing detection and response tool stack – integrating the security validation solution with current detection and response tools leads to identifying where configuration is lacking and the potential overlap between different tools or gaps in security coverage.

‣ Managing the entire attack surface – as organizations grow, keeping track of all digital assets that might be leveraged as entry points should be automated with attack surface management modules.

‣ Maintaining cyber and IT hygiene – applying an attack-based vulnerability management approach boosting the risk curtailment effect of the vulnerability patching and, as a bonus, considerably reduces vulnerability patching workload.

‣ Monitor and manage security drift – using the collected information to establish quantified baselines and monitor and correct the variance from these baselines with a minimum time gap.

Large organizations with a staff that includes an in-house red team can apply the extended security posture management approach to its full extent by scaling up its preemptive offensive program, not just the defenses, to:

‣ Provide an open purple teaming framework to enable the creation and automation of customized security assurance procedures and health checks tailored specifically for the environment and policies.

‣ Incorporate security validation into organizational risk management.

‣ Implement a continuous assurance program.

‣ Reduce manual work in automating scripting and launching common attack scenarios as well as in eliminating the tedious report generation after each exercise.

Cymulate XSPM platform provides end-to-end validation with varying degrees of depth, security risk scoring calculated not only by using industry-recognized standards such as the NIST Risk Management Framework, CVSS v3.0 Calculator, Microsoft’s DREAD or the MITRE ATT&CK™ Framework but also based on environment-specific attack paths, and the creation of an attack-based vulnerability patching prioritization plan.

In today’s fast-evolving cyber-threat landscape, including automated security validation tools should be a top priority for any organization still lacking them. I hope that this breakdown of what to look for according to your organization’s size provides a handy, practical, and serviceable clarification of the constitutive elements of security validation and how any organization can incorporate the right level for its size.

Don’t miss Cymulate’s presentation: The Impact Continuous Security Validation has on Security Operations and Incident Response at Camp Secure Sense! Don Murphy, Senior Solutions Architect, will be presenting at 3:40pm on Day 1 in the Idea Loft. 

Space is very limited at this time, so Register now!

In today’s fast-evolving cyber-threat landscape, including automated security validation tools should be a top priority for any organization still lacking them. This blog is a breakdown of what to look for according to your organization’s size and provides a handy, practical, and serviceable clarification of the constitutive elements of security validation and how any organization can incorporate the right level for its size.

Camp Secure Sense is the leading IT Security Networking Event in Canada for the information technology leaders some of North Americas largest corporations. Register now to join decision makers and the Secure Sense team this year on September 28th & 29th.