Frost & Sullivan 2018 Best Practices Award, attributed to XM Cyber this month, shines a bright light on the transition to automated and continuous red team – blue team simulation. Here’s a summary of the report’s highlights.
The role of manual red and blue teams to date
In the enterprise world, human-based siloed red team – blue team exercises are common place and have been growing in popularity for over a decade. Similar to militaries they harness opposing forces to increase an organization’s cybersecurity posture.
The red team is tasked with finding security blind spots through brute force attack on the network, physically and virtually. Positioned on the attack side, the red team is supposed to create training exercises for the defensive blue team, and by doing so, contribute to the security posture. It’s supposed to help the blue team understand the course of action to remediate network vulnerabilities and improve their competence.
The security cracks between red and blue teams
Blue teams’ defense tasks, usually conducted by internal IT and security teams, bear the brunt of an imbalanced focus on red team tasks during this staged security dual. They often suffer from operator fatigue following time consuming remedial hours that are part and parcel of extensive red team exercises.
Red and blue teams are also an expensive overhead for the organizations employing them to perform the security testing exercises, both in terms of human resources and costs. But the most diabolical outcome lies in the security cracks in between each exercise, when human error can once again leave a network exposed to attack vectors.
Technology’s rising role in transforming manual simulations
Frost & Sullivan recognized the rising role of technology in transforming manual simulations to the next level. In its report, the analyst group assesses automated advanced persistent threat (APT) simulation platforms and their role in elevating an organization’s cyber protection.
“Automated advanced persistent threat (APT) simulation & remediation platforms can deliver superior and constant cybersecurity protection to an organization’s ecosystem by simulating, validating and remediating hackers’ paths to organizational critical assets.”
The report goes on to state; a technology provider that can integrate blue teaming in its technology will offer an unmatched solution. It will bring more ROI and value than any security vulnerability assessment solution. It claims HaXM offers an automated and continuous APT simulation platform that empowers organization with visibility into the gaps within their security posture.
Following its assessment, Frost & Sullivan believes “XM Cyber is a pioneer in the APT simulation and remediation solution market and is impressed with its innovation and quick growth.”
The importance of tailoring simulation testing to the customer
XM Cyber is a client centric company that tailors each solution to the customer’s IT environment, critical assets, industry and ecosystem. As each organization’s network, IT culture and ecosystem vary, there is a need to configure and tailor each solution. Being more familiar with each customer enables a better service experience per customer and helps to maximize the customer’s ROI.
In sum
In an ever increasing complex and dynamic security environment where organization’s face a fading perimeter, enterprises can benefit from an automated APT simulation and remediation solution. The transition to automation could improve the current status quo where organizations require IT personnel to manually find and remediate security gaps. XM Cyber’s APT platform empowers organizations with the ability to continuously expose their network’s security gap. For its innovation, customer-centric technology, and strong overall performance, XM Cyber earns Frost & Sullivan’s 2018 Europe Technology Innovation Award.
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