Latest / Cybersecurity Business with Fexingo: Security Companies, Breaches, and Enterprise Defense / How Security Teams Use Breach and Attack Simulation
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to talk about a category of security tool that's been quietly eating the lunch of traditional penetration testing — breach and attack simulation, or BAS. Luna: I've seen the term. It's basically automated red teaming, right? You run software that simulates attacks against your own environment without needing a human operator? Lucas: Exactly. The core idea is continuous validation. Instead of hiring a penetration testing firm once or twice a year to poke at your network, you deploy a platform that constantly runs attack scenarios — things like lateral movement, credential theft, data exfiltration — and tells you which of your security controls actually caught them. Luna: So it's not just scanning for vulnerabilities. It's testing whether your defenses work when a real attacker shows up. Lucas: Right. A vulnerability scanner tells you, 'Hey, this server is missing a patch.' A BAS platform runs a simulated ransomware attack and reports back, 'Your endpoint detection blocked it on Windows machines but missed it on Linux.' It tests the efficacy of your controls, not just their presence. Luna: Who are the main players in this space? I know Cymulate has been growing fast. Lucas: Cymulate, AttackIQ, SafeBreach — those are the three that come up most often. AttackIQ has a big footprint in the US federal space. SafeBreach was founded by former Israel Defense Forces intelligence folks. And Cymulate is Israeli as well, very popular in enterprise. Pricing typically starts around thirty to fifty thousand dollars a year for a midsize deployment. Luna: Compared to a typical penetration test that might run fifty to a hundred grand for a one-week engagement, that's cheap — especially if you run it continuously. Lucas: That's the economic argument. A single annual pen test gives you a snapshot. BAS gives you a trend line. You can see if your security posture is improving week over week or if a new misconfiguration is opening a hole. And because it's automated, you can run it after every major change — new cloud deployment, new app release, new firewall rule. Luna: Does that mean BAS replaces the human red team entirely? Lucas: Not entirely, and most vendors are careful not to claim that. A skilled human red team can chain together complex multi-step attacks that automated tools struggle with. They can use social engineering, physical access, creative pivoting. But for routine validation — 'Did we fix that AD misconfiguration? Does our EDR detect Mimikatz?' — BAS handles it at scale. Luna: What about compliance? I can see auditors liking the idea of continuous evidence rather than a single test report. Lucas: That's actually a huge driver. PCI DSS 4.0, for example, expects entities to validate security controls at least every three months. BAS makes that easy — you just run a quarterly simulation and export the report. SOC 2 and FedRAMP are also starting to recognize continuous validation as a stronger control than point-in-time testing. Some CISOs tell me they've shifted their entire compliance testing budget from annual pen tests to BAS subscriptions. Luna: One thing I wonder about: false positives. If you're simulating attacks constantly, how do you avoid overwhelming the SOC with alerts that aren't real? Lucas: The platforms are designed to tag their own traffic. They inject markers into the simulated attack payloads so detection systems can flag them as 'known bad' for logging but not escalate to the incident response team. You can also schedule simulations during maintenance windows. Good platforms let you filter results to show only control failures — the things that actually matter. Luna: So it's more about validation than alert generation. You're testing the system, not the people. Lucas: Exactly. And that's a big cultural difference from a live-fire red team exercise where the SOC might not know it's happening. BAS is transparent. Everyone knows the simulation is running. It's a measurement tool, not a surprise drill. Luna: Okay, I want to ask about a specific use case. Cloud environments — especially multi-cloud. How well do these platforms handle testing across AWS, Azure, GCP? Lucas: Pretty well now. They all support API integrations with the major cloud providers. You can simulate attacks against S3 buckets, Azure AD, GCP IAM roles. The newer platforms also test container security — they'll plant a malicious container image and see if your runtime detection catches it. That's a big deal because traditional pen testers often don't have deep cloud expertise. Luna: Let's talk about a concrete number. I read a report that said organizations using BAS detect control failures sixty percent faster than those relying on periodic assessments. Does that match what you hear? Lucas: I've seen similar. One CISO at a Fortune 500 told me they found a critical misconfiguration in their VPN gateway within two hours of deploying BAS — a flaw that had been there for over a year because their last pen test didn't cover that particular scenario. The speed of feedback is the killer feature. You don't wait months to learn you're exposed. Luna: That's the kind of story that sticks. So if you're a security team listening, what's the first step to evaluating BAS? Lucas: Start with a proof of value. Most vendors offer a free trial that runs simulations against your actual environment for a week. Pick your top three attack scenarios — ransomware, credential theft, data exfiltration — and see what the platform finds. Compare that to your last pen test report. The gaps will be eye-opening. Lucas: And like any tool, it's only as good as the integration. You need to connect it to your EDR, your firewall logs, your cloud security posture management. The platforms are only as useful as the data they can consume. Luna: It sounds like BAS is becoming table stakes for serious security programs. Not replacing everything, but filling a gap that's been there for years. Lucas: Absolutely. And it ties into a broader shift we're seeing across the industry — from periodic assessments to continuous validation. If this kind of conversation is useful for what you're building or running, listener support is what keeps the show ad-free and independent. People who find value can toss a few bucks our way at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, but it helps us keep drilling into topics like this. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to say this content matters. And we appreciate every one of you who does. Lucas: Alright, back to the tech. One trend I'm watching is BAS platforms adding purple teaming capabilities — where the simulation results feed into recommendations for both blue and red teams. Some are even incorporating adversary emulation frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK to map each simulation to specific tactics and techniques. Luna: So you get not just a pass/fail on your controls, but a direct line to 'here's what you need to improve' mapped to real-world attacker behavior. Lucas: Exactly. And that's where the ROI compounds. You're not just checking a compliance box. You're systematically closing the gaps that actual adversaries exploit. It's a defensive feedback loop that runs on a weekly cadence instead of an annual one. Luna: What about the smaller organizations? Is BAS only for enterprises with six-figure security budgets? Lucas: There are lighter-weight options now. Some MSSPs offer BAS as a managed service — you don't deploy the platform yourself, you just get the reports. There's also open-source BAS frameworks like Caldera from MITRE, though they require more hands-on setup. For a startup with ten employees, managed BAS might run a few thousand a year. Much cheaper than a full-time red teamer. Luna: And I imagine insurance carriers are starting to ask about it too. If you can show continuous validation, your cyber insurance premium might go down. Lucas: That's starting to happen. Some underwriters now give discounts if you can demonstrate that you're running BAS regularly. It's a measurable signal that you're actively managing risk rather than just buying a policy and hoping for the best. Luna: So the business case is getting stronger from multiple angles: security, compliance, insurance, cost efficiency. Lucas: Right. And the technology is mature enough that the risk of deploying it is low. It's not like early intrusion detection systems that flooded the SOC with noise. Modern BAS platforms are built to be safe — they don't cause actual damage, they don't disrupt production traffic, they just observe and report. Luna: I think we've made the case. For anyone on the fence, try a proof of value. It's low risk, high information. Lucas: That's the bottom line. Next episode, we'll look at a related trend — how security teams are using adversary emulation platforms to go a step beyond BAS and actually train their defenders against specific threat actors. Until then, keep validating.