Security teams for businesses across the world are facing the challenge of finding and maintaining effective tools to keep their IT infrastructures safe from cyber attacks. Standard approaches, such as penetration testing, are useful in assessing the efficacy of security schemes but can also be costly, resource-intensive and may only provide a snapshot of the current state of network security. With attackers growing more sophisticated and IT systems more complex, businesses need a more comprehensive and automated way to assess their security defenses and improve them. Fortunately, breach and attack simulations (BAS) can provide one such solution.
BAS is an internal simulation exercise that mimics the full cycle of an attack on an organization’s own IT network and assets using the same tactics, techniques and procedures that hackers do. It can focus on replicating known and unknown threats, including spear-phishing attacks, malware infections or ransomware, user behavior and other vulnerabilities. BAS is designed to test how well security systems, controls and personnel perform during an attack and pinpoint gaps in the network’s defense systems. Regularly testing a network system’s vulnerabilities using BAS helps ensure that businesses can stay vigilant to the ever-changing nature of cyber attacks and maintain the optimal configuration for their security defense systems.
BAS tools are highly automated, which means that organizations can run frequent and comprehensive security simulations more easily compared to the time and resource-intensive penetration testing techniques. The iterative nature and wider scope of BAS provide a more convenient way of identifying new or unforeseen security gaps and fine-tuning existing security measures. BAS can also help improve two crucial security metrics: the mean time to detect and the mean time to respond. Running regular BAS exercises enables security teams to better identify and address vulnerabilities, fine-tune their monitoring and detection tools, enhance the speed and efficacy of their responses, and prioritize vulnerability patching schedules.
There are four essential use cases for BAS exercises, but there are many more benefits to BAS simulations than the ones mentioned below. Firstly, BAS exercises allow businesses to assess, stress test and validate their current security controls regularly. With frequent updates to software and systems, configuration drifts and errors can easily introduce security vulnerabilities. The iterative nature and wider scope of BAS help uncover hidden and unforeseen gaps in network security. Secondly, BAS tools help improve the efficiency of security systems by fine-tuning their mean time to detect and respond metrics. BAS simulations help security teams learn how to respond most effectively to various types of threats, prioritize vulnerabilities and improve patch updates.
Thirdly, BAS exercises aid businesses, especially during a period of rapid internal change, such as mergers, acquisitions, or expansion. BAS is an effective way of quickly gaining visibility into the security of the newly acquired or modified systems to ensure constant security with minimal disruption. Lastly, BAS exercises are useful for assessing user behavior. Employees are often the weakest link in an organization’s IT environment. BAS simulations will help gauge how employees react to phishing attacks, among other user-based threats. This type of exercise will determine the level of adherence to internal security standards, assess the effectiveness of current cybersecurity training, and identify which individuals need additional training.
While BAS is a great tool to test security defenses, it should be used together with other techniques. Businesses must act on the results and remediate any flaws and weaknesses identified by the tests. BAS simulations should show progress and improvement in subsequent tests. As enterprise networks become more complex and as cloud-oriented, IoT, and remote workforces grow; breach and attack simulations will become increasingly relevant to ensure strong security postures.