Hacker Simulation and Strategic Monitoring

What Is a Hacker Simulator?

Hacker Simulators are tools and exercises that help businesses understand and improve their security posture by evaluating the effectiveness of their tools and cybersecurity teams.

By mimicking real-life attacks and situations using the latest techniques by malicious threat actors, a dedicated team can help test the capabilities, visibility, and maturity of the security team and environment.

A Hacker Simulator exercise can also be performed through tools that can help in continuous testing through automation, using different attack vectors and techniques on every instance.

What Is the Primary Purpose of a Hacker Simulator?

The main objective of a Hacker Simulator is to help identify the potential attack vectors, build a plan for improvement of the current security posture and implement it to mitigate or resolve these issues.

Additional goals are to identify weak points such as legacy systems, vulnerable software and assess the effectiveness of the Human Firewall, the capabilities and response time of employees, and IT teams to respond to real threats.

Penetration Testing

Pen testing, also called ethical hacking, is an industry-accepted method to test the security of your environment, including external and internal assets, through a sanctioned penetration test.

Through an established scope and rules of engagement, a group or individual performs proper identification and assessment of weaknesses or vulnerabilities found on systems belonging to the business, attempting to gain access to them and sensitive information.

Think of pen testing as a simulated war game. Yes, that might sound extreme, but it’s a viable comparison. Basically, a pen test simulates a cyber attack to help you pinpoint your computer system’s vulnerabilities. The pen test attempts to breach your computers application systems such as the following:

• Application protocol interfaces (APIs)
• Frontend/backend servers
• Inputs that might be vulnerable to code injection attacks.

The final goal is to provide the business with a clean report, explaining how the cybersecurity kill chain was used, what items require immediate action and how to fix them to prevent malicious actors from taking advantage of them.

Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS)

Breach and attack simulations (BAS) are a relatively new simulated automated attack technology that mimics the methods used by cybercriminals. The ‘pretend’ attack gives you insight into your system’s potential vulnerabilities so you can start testing your detection and prevention capabilities and bolster them if needed.

Through the use of BAS software that automates attacks and can periodically run sanctioned exercises through different attack vectors, you’ll be able to explore multiple effective techniques to test your security team’s capabilities and tools.

Malware and Ransomware Simulation

Modern cybercriminals regularly attack businesses through malware and ransomware, affecting businesses regardless of size or industry.

By using effective malware and ransomware simulation, your security team is given the capability of identifying the effectiveness of tools and processes used to prevent or mitigate an actual attack.

Red vs. Blue Team Exercise

Large businesses use Red vs. Blue Team exercises that use a dedicated team on both fronts for offense and defense. Each team works together to fully assess all potential attack vectors, techniques, weaknesses, and ways to improve, mitigate and remediate them.

A Blue Team can make use of a SOC, continuously monitoring tools and incidents, while a Red Team makes use of penetration testers, social engineering, and automated tools to gain access to the physical and virtual space of the businesses.

Human Firewall Training

The Human Firewall is one of the strongest and weakest components in businesses around the world. However, with proper continuous training, evaluation, and exercises, all employees can become the first deterrent to an attack.

Phishing

A phishing exercise is performed by sending fake emails which attempt to mislead the user into taking actions that could in real-life situations damage the integrity of the systems or be used to steal sensitive information.

Vishing

A vishing exercise is performed by calling business employees, impersonating providers or co-workers to attempt to obtain sensitive information, or make end-users perform actions that could potentially give way for malicious threat actors to enter the business infrastructure.

Smishing

A smishing exercise uses SMS texts to attempt to get end-users to respond to fake messages, obtain information directly, or lure them into visiting dubious websites that could install malicious software to get access to their devices.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Hacker Simulators

Advantages

• It can help identify weak spots in infrastructure and software.
• Assess and identify the capabilities and response time of the human firewall.
• Helps in building mitigation and remediation plans, improving the security posture.
• It improves the knowledge and response time of your information security team.
• Automated Hacker Simulators provide continuous visibility on your security posture.

Disadvantages

• It can be costly to implement and maintain.
• Needs dedicated resources for all Hacker Simulator scenarios
• Can increase the stress of resources needed by an IT and Information Security Department
• Potential downtimes can happen due to these exercises due to inadequate scoping or lack of knowledge.
• Small and Medium-sized businesses can find it challenging to gather the resources or follow-up on results from Hacker Simulator exercises.

CYREBRO’s Strategic Monitoring Solution

Hacker Simulators are mostly used by large businesses inside their established processes for cybersecurity assessment, but the cost of resources or a dedicated team makes it hard for SMBs to be able to make use of them.

SMBs need to rely on cost-effective solutions to fend of cyber-attacks with minimal resources and skilled cybersecurity professionals relative to the competition.

This is where CYREBRO’s Strategic Monitoring comes into the picture.

Strategic monitoring is not just about preventing a potential cyber-attack but also making sure your team is ready when one does happen.

A company that monitors its strategic planning also ensures that its team is functioning at the top of its game with proper records and a successful protocol in place. The entire process is as analytical as crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s.

However, with strategic monitoring, there are additional steps that you can take to secure your system and make sure you are ready for any potential threats. CYREBRO is a cloud-based SOC Platform that effortlessly integrates all of your data, actively scanning your environment and informing you 24/7 of vulnerabilities or weak points that malicious threat actors could use as an attack vector.

Using cutting-edge technology with an AI-driven correlation engine, your security team can have the visibility it needs with recommendations on improving your security posture.

Contact us now to get more information and schedule a demo to understand how CYREBRO can help your business stay safe.