Estimating the true risk possessed by vulnerabilities through

breach and attack simulation

The myth of perfect Cybersecurity:

Have you ever heard of perfect cybersecurity? If we put it simply, the answer is no.
If you read much about ransomware, malware attacks, or data breaches, you would
surely come across the term vulnerabilities, threats, risks, and exploits. These terms
are always the key ones in the field of cybersecurity. It's always important to choose
the right security controls and take necessary precautions to eradicate the risk
possessed by vulnerabilities, threats, etc. The differences between vulnerability and
exploitability can easily help us in prioritizing vulnerabilities and understanding
risks in a much better way.

Validate Cyberdefense and maximize security controls:

It’s very crucial to regularly test your defences on the offensive and firstly on your
own network connections. There are security validation methods available such as
Vulnerability Scanning, Penetration Testing but there are certain limitations
to these methods. Sometimes these methods can also produce false-positive reports
and flag certain issues that might not be critical to security and can create
unnecessary alerts. In the field of cybersecurity, one needs to stay alert to overcome
the security risks and stay up to date. Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS)
technology could do an exceptional job in estimating the true risks possessed by the
vulnerabilities.

Breach and attack simulation agents, the saviour:

BAS technology uses agents on the target machines to simulate attacks on the server.
BAS can easily imitate risks, threats from the target machines. When the simulation
is triggered, the agent will run on target machines such as laptops, servers, networks,
etc. It would simplify testing of exploits by allowing users to perform a variety of
automated simulated attacks. The agent continuously communicates to the server to
download the scripts and calculates the attack pathway using the simulated
techniques. It furthers execute locally on the target machines and send back the
calculated response to the server. Using attack simulation, the Kronos tool could
easily prioritize vulnerability management and can reduce risk and improve process
between security control and
operations.
Kronos: The future of Breach and Attack simulation
Kronos BAS tool is a powerful tool, easy to manage, and makes the solutions less
complex. It is designed to mimic real-time risks possessed by vulnerabilities and
helps to determine if it’s caught by the vulnerability scanner. BAS uses a set of
complex scripts and attack scenarios fed in the Kronos Database. The BAS agent
downloads the attack scripts when the simulation is triggered and generates a
response. It further confirms if the simulation was successful and then shows where
it is exposed to various risks and attacks.

References:

1.Cyber Attack News | Cymulate Breach and Attack Simulation

2.https://www.xmcyber.com/research/
3.https://softprom.com/vendor/cymulate/product/breach-and-attack-simulation-
platform
4.Exploitability Vs Vulnerability — Leveraging Exploitability for Vulnerability
Management | by Dr. Swarup Kumar Sahoo | Deepfence Cloud Native Security |
Medium