The Power of Continuous Security Validation
What if your company's data and systems are perpetually under attack without ever having a chance to rest? What if every day your company's data is accessed by someone who could potentially exploit it? Unfortunately, this is the reality of many companies today. Hackers are relentlessly probing your network to find weaknesses and vulnerabilities that they can exploit to steal your data. With malicious actors constantly lurking in the shadows and an endless stream of new cyber threats, it can easily feel like you don’t stand a chance at keeping your data secure.
But what if you could fight back? What if you could make it impossible for the hacker to gain a foothold in your systems? Now that would be an effective security solution!
This is where continuous security validation comes in. In this post, we'll take a closer look at what continuous security validation is and how it works. We’ll also explore its benefits and how you can use it to protect your organization.
What is Continuous Security Validation?
What is continuous security validation? Put simply, it's a process that helps you ensure the security of your data continually.
You might already have all the security controls in place that you need, but what’s the guarantee that they’re working as intended? Continuous security validation is an automated and easy way to ensure that the security controls you already have in place are functioning as efficiently as possible.
Rather than manually testing each of your security controls, or conducting full (and expensive) security assessments sporadically, CSV is a consistent and thorough process that helps you keep security gaps in check. Point-in-time security checks may give you an idea of how your security controls are performing at the moment, but it cannot give you an idea about the long-term.
In contrast to traditional security assessment techniques, this process is a more aggressive approach to testing that uses a range of automation tools such as machine learning and artificial intelligence to simulate real-world cyber attacks including lateral movements, account takeover, exploitation and insider threats. This type of assessment provides you with an in-depth understanding of your security posture and its weaknesses. The effectiveness of your security controls are mapped against the
MITRE ATT&CK Framework - a compilation of a compilation of cyberattack techniques and tactics that can help you assess the strength of your security controls.
How Does it Work?
Continuous security validation technology enables organizations to automatically replicate the full attack and enhanced kill chain against enterprise infrastructure, using software agents, virtual machines, and other tools.
The main objectives of the CSV process are to find the security and performance gaps, fix these gaps before they are discovered by hackers, and improve your security capabilities. This cycle is repeated to ensure the continuous safety of your systems.
CSV systems run simulated cyber attacks against your defense systems. For instance, your company could pick a pertinent attack vector from the ATT&CK Framework such as Token Impersonation, let's say, and CSV would let you test your security infrastructure against this threat. Following that, you can fix any security gaps that came up during the CSV process.
Methods used in CSV:
Listed below are some of the techniques commonly used for continuous security validation:
Red Team Testing
Red teams are experts in attacking systems and breaching defense systems. They aggressively try to break into your network just like a bad actor would. They usually use a mix of manual testing, automated tools, and human skill to do this. Red team tests are one of the best continuous security strategies you can use because their expertise is nearly impossible to replicate using other methods.
Breach and Attack Simulator
A Breach and Attack Simulator platform makes use of software that mimics real-world attacks that help organizations improve their incident response capabilities and find security weaknesses in their systems. The entire process is automated, in fact, BAS systems can even automatically suggest corrective actions when issues are found. They typically make use of known exploits from the MITRE ATT&CK database and also use scanning to find vulnerabilities.
Implementing Continuous Security Validation
The CISA recommends valuable guidance on implementing Continuous Security Validation in their Red Team's Key Findings. Here are the recommended steps:
1. Select an ATT&CK Technique: Choose a relevant ATT&CK technique from the MITRE ATT&CK Framework, aligning with your organization's threat landscape.
2. Align Security Technologies: Ensure your existing security technologies cover the selected ATT&CK technique, spanning firewalls, endpoint protection, and more. If not, consider implementing additional technologies.
3. Test Your Technologies: Conduct controlled tests to evaluate your security technologies against the chosen ATT&CK technique, simulating real-world attack scenarios.
4. Analyze Performance: Analyze how well your technologies detect and mitigate the attack behaviors specified in the ATT&CK technique.
5. Gather Comprehensive Data: Repeat the testing process across various ATT&CK techniques to accumulate comprehensive performance data.
6. Refine Your Security Program: Use the data to fine-tune your security program, encompassing people, processes, and technologies, addressing identified weaknesses.
7. Emphasize Continuous Testing: Regularly test your security program at scale in a production environment against MITRE ATT&CK techniques, as recommended by CISA.
The Australian Centre for Cybersecurity also has a Continuous Monitoring Plan for organizations to continuously monitor and validate the effectiveness of their security controls. It recommends performing regular vulnerability scans, assessments, and penetration tests to assess your overall security posture.
Benefits of Continuous Security Validation
The benefits of continuous security validation are clear:
Improved Detection and Visibility
Continuous Security validation can help you detect security flaws that go undetected or are difficult to detect with your existing detection and response tools. It can help identify and isolate attacks before they cause any damage. Additionally, when implemented correctly, CSV gives you a comprehensive view of your entire environment.
Faster Response Time to Attacks
Without continuous security validation, there’s only one way you can find out if you’re under attack - when it’s already too late. Proactively validating your security posture against known and unknown threats and vulnerabilities is crucial for keeping your organization safe from cyber attacks.
Reduced Financial Impact of a Data Breach
With continuous security validation, you can ensure that your security controls are able to quickly identify and mitigate any potential breaches before they escalate into a major incident. By identifying and mitigating security gaps early, you can save money and avoid costly damage to your business.
Validation of Your Security Posture
CSV gives you the reassurance that your current security posture is adequate to protect your organization. By continuously testing and validating your security controls, you can make improvements wherever required and make sure that your security posture is strong enough to withstand the latest threats.
Compliance Made Easier
CSV also makes it easier to meet regulatory compliance requirements. Today’s compliance standards call for improved data and threat protection controls in addition to more stringent logging and reporting requirements. CSV combined with proactive security monitoring helps you meet those requirements while reducing your overall compliance costs.
And that's not all. You can also use continuous security validation for purposes beyond just security control validation. For example, you can use it to evaluate third party integrations, products, and services, to streamline the configuration of SIEM tools, and to integrate threat intelligence data into your attack campaigns. Moreover, CSV helps you develop a smarter security strategy, remove redundant security controls, validates the resilience of your security posture, and supports your budgeting decisions objectively.
All in all, continuous security validation is a vital part of keeping your data safe and sound.
Continuous Security Validation vs Continuous Security Monitoring
While the terms continuous security validation and continuous security monitoring may seem similar, they are actually quite different.
Continuous security monitoring is the continuous and real-time monitoring of the events and activities that take place in your network. This monitoring provides continuous feedback about your network activity and helps to improve threat detection and response capabilities. You can learn more about continuous security monitoring in our blog post,
Continuous Security Monitoring.
Continuous Security Validation on the other hand, is the testing of your existing security controls to ensure that they are functioning correctly and to provide ongoing assurance that your security infrastructure is resilient against attacks.
When used in conjunction with continuous security monitoring, continuous security validation is a powerful tool for improving the security of your organization.
Mistakes to Avoid During Continuous Security Validation
Avoiding common mistakes is crucial for the success of your CSV implementation. Here are some pitfalls to watch out for:
- Overlooking Automation: Automation makes the testing process faster and also eliminates the possibility of human errors due to fatigue or negligence. It also allows you to test more frequently, with greater coverage and depth.
- Ignoring Threat Intelligence: Failing to incorporate threat intelligence data into CSV can result in missing emerging threats and vulnerabilities that are not covered by known attack techniques.
- Inadequate Reporting and Communication: If you don't effectively communicate CSV findings to key stakeholders, you may miss opportunities for security improvements and risk mitigation.
- Static Validation: Continuous Security Validation should evolve with the threat landscape. Static validation processes that do not adapt to emerging threats may become obsolete.
Conclusion
So why should you invest in continuous security validation?
We’ll sum it up for you with a few key reasons.
First, it helps you stay ahead of the curve. Security threats are constantly evolving, and if you're not continuously validating your security measures, you're putting your business at risk. Second, it's a great way to detect vulnerabilities early on. By identifying and addressing vulnerabilities as they come up, you're significantly minimizing the risk of a security breach. Finally, it's a more efficient way to work. Continuous security validation is automated and can be scheduled to run at regular intervals. This means you can spend less time on manual tasks and more time on strategic initiatives that will help your business grow.
The power of continuous security validation cannot be overstated. If you want to keep your data and systems safe, you need to implement a continuous security validation process.
To learn more about how you can test and validate your security controls,
schedule a consultation/demo with our team of experts.
