Be Your Own Worst Enemy: Why an Offensive Approach to Security Is Nonnegotiable
This article is excerpted from Keysight's Geek-to-Guru Guide: Offensive Network Security
There’s a world of bad actors hammering at your digital door. You’ve invested in an array of network security tools, and your enterprise security team works tirelessly to fend off attacks. But configuration drift is a persistent, latent threat. After a steady stream of patches and updates, it’s hard to know if your network, applications, and data are still as safe as they were the day those tools went live.
With so much at stake, do you want to wait for attackers to point out your vulnerabilities? After all, they only have to be successful once. You, on the other hand, had better succeed every single time.
There’s only one way to be sure you’re secure: you need to fight back against attackers, and take an offensive approach to network security.
Hack Yourself — or Others Will Do It for You
You know how persistent and clever your attackers are. So flip the script and make the first move. Using a breach and attack simulation (BAS) platform such as Keysight’s Threat Simulator, you can safely simulate attacks on your production network to uncover weaknesses and vulnerabilities. These tools use the trusted MITRE ATT&CK framework to simulate malware campaigns, spear phishing, data exfiltration, cross-site scripting, database exploits, advanced persistent threats, and more.
By performing automated assessments, you can continuously test your security solutions against a wide range of threats — right on your production network. Should your security solutions fail to mitigate a simulated attack, your team will be the first to know.
Prevent Attacks Before They Happen
Finding problems is easy. Fixing them is harder. Your team doesn’t need to waste cycles researching fixes — it needs step-by-step instructions to remediate problem areas quickly.
Fortunately, a good BAS solution can help you cut through the clutter. Look for tools that provide detailed directions to remediate any gaps, misconfigurations, or vulnerabilities you find. Whether you need to deploy a patch on your next-generation firewall, enable new functionality on your intrusion prevention system, or install a new tool altogether, these kinds of product-specific, step-by-step instructions can help you optimize your architecture and strengthen your cyber defenses.
Think Like the Enemy
The threat landscape is in a constant state of flux...