There are several ways to improve an organization’s security, including deploying sophisticated tools, technologies, safer processes and policies, following industry best practices, educating employees, etc. However, the experts figured out that the best way to protect organizational assets from hackers and other malicious actors or cyber attacks is to imitate them and simulate real-time scenarios. This method of actively simulating attacks on an organization is what we refer to as the Offensive approach to cyber security.
The practicality of this approach makes it very effective in finding the shortcomings in the processes, policies, and technologies involved in an organization’s work. The offensive approach also allows us to gauge the knowledge level of the employees, and other human resources involved, through social engineering, and phishing campaigns and allows us to identify and mitigate weak links earlier and before the actual bad actors discover and exploit them.
Cyber Security teams are broadly classified into two categories, the Red team, and the Blue team. Where Blue team members are concerned with the defensive type of technologies and deploying solutions and patches, and actively monitoring for anomalies (aka. incident detection and response) to harden the security posture of the organization’s infrastructure, Red team members proactively try to penetrate the organization’s physical as well as digital security by using tools, techniques, and technologies to exploit and gain access to the company’s resources.
Penetration Testers or Ethical Hackers are the ones responsible for conducting red team assessments. Red Team members require out-of-the-box thinking capabilities along with strong technical capabilities to manipulate and exploit vulnerabilities and mold things to make them work opposite to what they are intended to. Ethical hackers do not need to be specialists, but a specialist can better understand and exploit vulnerabilities than a generalist. Also, the success of Red Team operations depends on the assessment design specifically curated to meet the needs of the individual organizations.
Security is not a one-stop solution to prevent and secure against cyber threats. Cyber threats are continuously getting complex and sophisticated, and to mitigate these threats and realize their impact it is necessary to perform assessments effectively and with adherence to CICD. SecurDI’s experienced professionals understand security is not a tool or single elixir solution. rather We understand that it requires a defense-in-depth approach and continuous improvement in your people, process, and technology. Our team of certified professionals possess the knowledge and experience to guide you and design a cost-effective and practically efficient assessment plan.
Authored By,
Suneet Singh