Data breaches can cripple businesses, with both small and large-scale companies suffering millions in total damages. Just for a small business, the global average for a data breach totals nearly $4.0 million USD; for a publicly-traded company, this number is extraordinarily large, coming in at around $115 million USD.
While companies can never 100% protect themselves against the possibility of a cyberattack occurring and their data being breached, there is a range of preventative measures that they can take. One of the most popular of these is using automatic Breach and Attack Simulation platforms, which will help find weaknesses in a company’s security systems.
What is BAS?
Breach and Attack Simulation is an automated process where a piece of software combs through all the different access points that attackers would use to break into a company’s systems. By going through the MITRE Attack Framework, which is one of the largest collections of hacking techniques that have previously been used against companies, BAS providers will ensure that there are no weak points in a company’s system.
Typically, after moving through tens of thousands of different access points that are connected to a system, the Breach and Attack Simulation will come across a range of access points that are not protected well enough. By then compiling a list of these different areas, cybersecurity experts will then get to work trying to patch and fix these potentially compromised access points.
As this process can be repeated frequently, cybersecurity offers can use this as an effective way of continually refining and improving a company’s defenses, ensuring that they’re much less likely to be targeted within an attack.
Breach and Attack Simulation used to be run as a manual exercise, but the significant amounts of time and resources that moving to automatic systems has saved rapidly changed this industry.
How Does BAS Work?
Ninety-five percent of all cybersecurity breaches are directly related to human error, with simple oversights and easy-to-make mistakes leading to millions of dollars of damages every single year. As an automatic process, Breach and Attack Simulation platforms will attempt to locate, pinpoint, and undo any errors that are within your security configuration – whether they are caused by human error or not.
As machines do not accidentally skip over a point or forget to check a certain area of your attack surface, they are much more reliable. A BAS provider will comb through your entire system, checking all available areas for potential weaknesses. With this, you’re able to simulate the Red Team attack automatically, allowing your company to feed areas to improve directly to your security team.
Breach and Attack Simulation works in the background and won’t place strain on your system, simply testing the limit and identifying your weakest points.
Why Use BAS?
When moving to use automatic Breach and Attack Simulation tools, companies do so because this is now one of the most advanced methods of continually refining their cybersecurity network. Instead of the older tactic of using Red and Blue Teams to understand weak points in the network, this automatic system is significantly more efficient.
Typically, there are 3 main benefits of using a Breach and Simulation platform:
- Saves Time – Whenever dealing with technology, it’s rarely the case that humans do something faster or more precisely than a machine. With Breach and Attack Simulation exercises, this is definitely not the case, with automatic platforms completing this process in a fraction of the time. If your company wants to save time while still keeping a high level of cybersecurity defense efficiency, then using automatic software is one of the best approaches you can take.
- More Precise – The modern attack surface for any business has grown to enormous proportions. While the attack surface of a company was once manageable, the mass movement to online platforms has meant that even when only focusing on user access points, there are now millions connected to small businesses. In fact, with over 59 million people working for small businesses in the U.S., that’s millions of accounts that a hacker could try to access. By moving through the whole attack surface of a business, automatic BAS tools can check open ports, comb through hidden accounts, and rapidly perform what would take humans weeks. All of this is done without missing anything, with Breach and Attack Simulation being a precise process that won’t miss a thing.
- Save Resources – When companies used to run large-scale Red and Blue Team projects, they would have to pay employees for an entire day of work that was only focusing on this singular task. Alongside this, a huge amount of resources would have to be allocated to these teams in order to give them everything they need to make the task efficient, not even to mention the huge organization that happened behind the scenes. Nowadays, when using an automatic Breach and Attack Simulation platform, businesses are able to cut back on the resources they consume while still getting the same high-quality results.
With benefits like these only just scratching the surface, it’s no wonder that automatic Breach and Attack Simulation platforms have become so popular over the past decade.
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking to keep your business safe from cyberattacks, then one of the most effective methods of checking the overall health of your systems is by running Breach and Attack Simulation. These programs will test the limits of your system, moving through your whole attack surface in search for a potential entry point.
With this, your cybersecurity team can then spend more time actually creating defenses and bolstering your system and less time searching. With this, you’ll always be improving the defenses of your system, working on becoming a company that is completely impenetrable to attacks.
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