20 Dec See What the Adversary Sees with Continuous Penetration Testing

Continuous Penetration Testing gives you the Attacker’s POV so you can remediate accordingly.

– Seemant Sehgal, CEO, BreachLock

Amsterdam, Netherlands – Dec. 20, 2022

It’s no secret the internet is constantly being scanned by adversaries, looking for vulnerable spots on a company’s attack surface.

Since cybercriminals notoriously go for the low-hanging fruit, organizations can reduce risks quickly by remediating newly exposed vulnerabilities proactively.

Why not continuously pentest and stay one step ahead of these adversaries — so you can see everything they see and remediate accordingly?

Traditional vs Modern vs Continuous Penetration Testing

Penetration testing as an engagement is an excellent way to conduct point-in-time control testing. Compliance and security validation of controls today are perfectly suited for this type of testing, especially when working with GRC to meet compliance requirements. However, the methods employed in penetration testing have dramatically expanded the options for security and technology leaders.

Traditional penetration testing methods have become outdated, as new advances in technology and the emergence of Pen Testing as a Service (PTaaS) have truly expanded the universe of testing options for security compliance and risk management. The ability to work with a trusted, dedicated vendor with full-stack penetration testing service offerings and benefits provides a streamlined way to meet compliance objectives, reduce risk, and test more often compared to traditional penetration testing.

As modern pen testing methods have become more efficient and effective, there is one constraint, and that is time. The threat landscape is constantly shifting, and an organization’s systems will change frequently. The point-in-time penetration test that was effective yesterday at managing risks may no longer be effective in mitigating a new risk today. That’s why continuous penetration testing has emerged to offer an always-on solution to real-time environment changes and the constantly evolving security risk landscape.

“Always On,” On-Demand Penetration Testing

Continuous penetration testing is an advanced offensive security strategy that helps with on-going testing for protection and remediation against new, emerging risks, like zero-day vulnerabilities. You can’t protect what you don’t know. Continuous penetration testing provides an “always-on” discovery process to find new, unknown, and critical vulnerabilities that require rapid remediation.

• Driven by compliance, like PCI DSS penetration testing, pen tests can validate regulatory mandates for security controls, such as code review, networks, and assets. The test is run to provide a pentest report on a single point-in-time.
• Meanwhile, continuous penetration testing offers the ability to test any time of day or night, as well as scan for new vulnerabilities, and remediate critical systems faster than ever before for on-going vulnerability management.
• Using continuous penetration testing for DevOps remediation is a smart way to integrate vulnerability management right into penetration testing lifecycle. Remediation of critical vulnerabilities is faster, risks of “unknown” vectors getting attacked are reduced, and cyber resilience is now the focus — vs incident response — to an emerging threat in the network.

With that continuity of pen testing in place, you get to see your adversary’s perspective on how they see you as a target. Imagine being able to log into a secure portal that provided you a single pane of glass to show you: “This” is how the hackers are looking at you. This is the hacker’s view of your world.

System-based testing is great to find known vulnerabilities. That’s for penetration testing networks, external network, internal network, web applications, mobile applications, IoT, Wi-Fi — all of these are great examples of the system. But to manage the expanding attack surface, there are unknowns. However, the unknowns cannot be tested. The unknowns are not covered in regular governance. That’s why there’s an urgency for a continuous method to proactively test and validate security controls.

When continuous penetration testing reveals something that you did not know — you have an increasing risk real-time, because it’s live. With the right continuous penetration testing, you can take action to remediate the unknown vulnerability right away before it’s exploited by cybercriminals.

Continuous Pen Testing for On-Time, Actionable Remediation

On-demand, proactive penetration testing assesses for compliance and validates that security controls are effectively hardened. For complete visibility, a continuous pen testing solution that gives you the full point-of-view that threat actors have of your attack surface — revealing security gaps in your environment — makes penetration testing more effective, realistic, and actionable. Always-on penetration testing delivers compliance, security validation, and rapid remediation with offensive security intelligence that you can act upon.

Benefits of Continuous Penetration Testing:

• Penetration testing is mapped to threat actor objectives in the attack chain.
• Findings are integrated into the security tech stack and threat intelligence gathering.
• Increase pen testing when critical risks are emerging in CTI with newly emerging TTPs.
• Leverage enterprise testing methods, see real-world attack chains, and learn from adversary emulation.

Having continuous penetration testing is much more than simply replicating pen tests or attacker techniques within your environment. As your security landscape and needs change, continuous penetration testing stays up to date, changing with the needs of the organization, and the security team. On-demand, continuous penetration testing across your entire ecosystem, including your digital environment, and systems that include people, processes, and technologies, offers a seamless way to monitor for new vulnerabilities proactively.

See the Adversary’s POV and Remediate Accordingly

Continuous penetration testing gives you the eagle’s eye, 500-foot vantage of the adversary. Using the attacker’s point of view, you can elevate remediation on discovered risks and stress-test the security of your attack surface that could be used to exploit your environment. When you have an “always-on” view of your adversaries — including a list of the likely TTPs — patching your most critical risks takes you off the hot-target radar that many companies find themselves in today.

Visibility is clear when you can “see” every vulnerability and security weakness that an adversary can using your penetration testing initial findings and final reports. This visibility helps with critical remediation priorities for DevOps to ensure the fastest route from discovery to resolution is completed quickly — without increasing any security risks unnecessarily.

The only effective way to combat new vulnerabilities and an increasing attack surface is to think and act like an adversary.

While it includes elements of traditional validation methods described above, it focuses more on walking in the hackers’ shoes.

Significantly Reduce Risk with Continuous Penetration Testing

Continuous penetration testing gives an organization the ability to take the attackers’ perspective and challenge their environment, controls, and systems against those TTPs. BreachLock is a proven, recognized penetration testing as a service provider with an efficient, expedited, and secure pathway to request penetration tests on-demand. Now, with continuous penetration testing, you can monitor changes in your full-stack environment. Contact us today to learn more about BreachLock continuous penetration testing.

– Seemant Sehgal is the founder and CEO at BreachLock

Sponsored by BreachLock

Affordable, Smarter and Scalable Cyber Security Testing

BreachLock™ offers a SaaS platform that enables our clients to request and receive a comprehensive penetration test with a few clicks.

Our unique approach makes use of manual as well as automated vulnerability discovery methods aligned with industry best practices.

We execute in-depth manual penetration testing and provide you with both offline and online reports. We retest your fixes and certify you for executing a Penetration Test. This is followed up with monthly automated scanning delivered via the BreachLock platform. Throughout this process, you have access to the platform and our security experts who will help you find, fix, and prevent the next cyber breach.

Find out why penetration testing with BreachLock™ is the leading choice for startups, SMBs, and enterprises around the world.

BreachLock has offices in The Netherlands, London, New York City, and Wilmington, Del.