Across all the distinct areas of cybersecurity, 2022 was a testing year. One of the most common exploits that hackers make use of, phishing, rose by 61% across the year. This represents only a small fragment of the total attacks, coming in at 3 million events. The average cost of any security exploit in 2022 was $4.3 million, demonstrating the extent to which cybercrime is draining capital from industries across the world.
It’s a fact of business that there is going to be a cyber event in your future – whether you’re prepared or not. In order to give yourself the best chance of evading or neutralizing the threat, you need to be ready. That’s why we’ll turn to cyber security simulation exercises in this article, walking you through everything you need to know. We’ll cover the following:
- Why Are Simulations Needed Now More Than Ever?
- What Methods for Simulation Do I Have?
- Benefits of Cyber Security Simulation Exercises
Let’s dive right in.
Why Are These Simulations Needed Now More Than Ever?
Cybercrime has continually risen every year for the better part of a decade. The only difference in this mounting figure came in 2020 and 2021, where cases of cyber crime rapidly jumped up far more than what was considered normal. Many believe that the pandemic, and its impacts on business as a whole, are the root cause.
As businesses moved online during the pandemic, they had to increase the scope of their tech stacks in order to facilitate out-of-office communication. We had platforms like Zoom and Google Meet explode overnight, with companies around the world turning to them for support. With this mass movement to additional technology, the general size of a company’s attack surface has radically increased.
For every employee that a company has, they have to create unique user accounts to access each one of these tools. As we add more platforms to the equation, the number of potential accounts for phishing, hacking, or hostile takeover increases. With this in mind, we were suddenly thrust into a global circumstance where hackers had a much greater potential avenue for entry into a business.
The sheer size of a company’s attack surface has made complete visibility nearly impossible. We cannot clearly manage all of our different accounts, platforms, networks, and access points at once.
Simply put, we need to turn to modern cybersecurity tools if we stand any chance of securing our business.
Which Methods For Cyber Security Improvement Can a Business Use?
At present, there are a huge number of different strategies that businesses will employ when trying to keep their business safe. This ranges from automatic scanning and penetration tests to creating personalized defenses and fixes when vulnerabilities become clear.
Often security experts will frequently refer to the MITRE Attack Framework to see all of the most recent known exploits that are being used against businesses. With this information, they can start to engineer solutions before each strategy is used against them.
However, by far, the most useful innovation within the world of security is the movement to cyber security simulation exercises. These exercises are where automated breach and attack simulation tools naturally move through your defenses, attempting to find vulnerabilities. This mirrors the classic penetration tests that were run but Red and Blue Teams, only without the demand for workers and time.
Cyber security simulation allows your business to continually look for new vulnerabilities, instantly notifying your security team if anything is found. Considering the huge scope of the modern-day business attack surface, the ability to do this gives companies a much better chance of being ready when a cyberattack comes.
Benefits of Cyber Security Simulation Exercises
Comprehensive cyber security simulation tools are expertly crafted to give your business the best possible security solution. By using up-to-date information from international cybersecurity frameworks, they will move through common methods that hackers use to gain entry into a company’s systems.
From there, they will ensure that every single angle of your business is covered. From open ports and user accounts to networks and blocking opportunities to inject malicious code into your data. The move to automatic systems has allowed these simulation exercises to bestow a number of advantages for businesses:
- Continual Improvements – Automatic systems don’t need to take breaks. Instead, they’re able to work around the clock. This helps ensure that hackers cannot take your business by surprise and that you are continually testing throughout new updates and launches.
- Entire Attack Surface Coverage – The automated nature of the tool allows it to work systematically through all of the devices and systems that are attached to your business. This covers your whole spectrum and will keep your business safe.
- Flexibility – If you have a specific vulnerability in mind, you can ask these simulation tools to focus on that area. This helps both for training and when you have a known vulnerability in mind that you want to weed out.
- Practice – Simulation tools also allow your security team to train their cyber event responses, honing their defense skills and becoming more efficient over time.
Cyber security simulation exercises are useful for absolutely everyone – helping your business, its employees, and your cyber security team become increasingly more prepared for a cyber event.
Final Points
Cyber security simulation exercises allow your business to continually improve its cyber defenses. As any exploit could trigger a spiral of losses within your company, it’s vital to ensure that you have everything covered. You won’t make huge upgrade leaps overnight when it comes to security; this is a slow field that you have to build up over time.
That’s why automatic and continual tools for monitoring, testing, and strengthening your defenses are the way to go. If you’re looking to steer clear of a cyber security event in 2023 and beyond, then this should be one of your company’s main priorities going forward.