Continuous Security Validation – How Does it Works?

Companies that have financial resources to allocate toward cybersecurity are hacked every day.

In January, there was a Royal Mail ransomware attack that halted international shipments for weeks.

In February, Coinbase suffered a data breach following an SMS phishing campaign.

In March, Acer admitted to a data breach that resulted in 160GB of compromised user data.

And for one of the most well-known password management companies, LastPasss, cyber incidents put sensitive client data at risk occur on more than one occasion.

This is alarming because all of the companies above handle personal user data. If such information is leaked, it can lead to scams, identity theft, and successful phishing — not to mention repeat attacks.

At the same time, cybersecurity companies are releasing improved technology every day. Security solutions haven’t been as advanced and nuanced as they are today.

We are better protected than ever before.

Yet, attacks and successful breaches keep happening — even to well-protected businesses.

So how can you feel safe and confident in your security solutions again?

Is there a way to know if your protective tools work — before becoming a victim of a damaging cyberattack?

Yes. Continuous security validation puts security to the test and lets your teams know where they stand.

Retaining Visibility After Adding More Security Points

Most companies have layered security that consists of an average number of 45 security tools that are placed on the infrastructure to defend businesses from malicious activity.

However, having more tools doesn’t necessarily mean that the network is protected any better. On the contrary, it can make it more difficult to retain visibility and keep up.

Those controls have to be appropriately used because any misconfiguration can create a major gap in security — causing costly mistakes.

Continuous security validation confirms whether the security company can withstand an actual attack. It displays the results in a dashboard, giving teams a birdseye view of the security.

As any professional knows that security is dynamic. It’s shifting and changing at all times.

A firewall can go down in the middle of the night, leaving the company exposed to malicious traffic.

Employees can click on malicious links and accidentally log in to a phishing site with their credentials — giving a bad actor access to the internal system. In fact, this is what happened in Coinbase’s data breach.

That’s why security benefits from automation.

Evaluation of Security in Real-time

AI-powered and automated, continuous security validation helps companies to be one step ahead of hackers.

It evaluates the security controls at all times, reporting back to teams using the latest findings and ways to improve security — making it stronger, more robust, and safer than before.

Compared to the costly traditional techniques like pen testing, which are used once or twice a year to test if the security works, continuous security validation is on the job 24/7.

Once the results of the pen testing are available to the company, and they get the suggested steps based on which they can improve security, the attack surface changes to such an extent that the pen testing report is already outdated.

Continual testing can prevent data breaches such as Acer’s latest breach, where the company found out about the hacking activity once the information had already been sold on hacking forums.

Staying Secure Amid New Threats

One reason it’s challenging to defend infrastructures is that hackers are using new techniques and tactics to target organizations.

Defending a company from sophisticated and new exploits such as ransomware that targeted Royal Mail is difficult.

That is why continuous security validation is linked to the MITRE ATT&CK Framework.

This resource is continually updated with the new methods — as reported by victimized companies.

Therefore, the tool tests and validates the security controls by using data from real-life attacks.

That makes the assessment accurate, and it can let you know exactly how an attack might play out if it happened on the day of testing.