Security Solutions | 3 mins
Any CISO will tell you that the digital world is expanding at a shocking rate. Some of the reasons for this expansion include:
- The pandemic, which accelerated the need for digital transformation
- The rise of a remote or freelance workforce
- Businesses and cities forming elaborate networks of partners and suppliers
- More digitally connected physical assets
- New emerging technologies
Because of this, the attack surface is much more complex and harder to define. Security hygiene and posture management are becoming more difficult. Only 51% of global enterprises say they understand the extent of their attack surface. Threat actors know this, and they’re busier than ever looking for exploitable and exposed assets.
More cyberattacks are coming at you: are you ready?
“Cyberattacks are on the rise, and there’s no indication that they will stop anytime soon,” McKinsey says. But despite that, few companies are ready.
A new study of 6,700 private sector cybersecurity leaders across 27 markets found that only 15% consider their companies to be at a "mature" state of cybersecurity readiness. The study also found:
- 82% of those surveyed expect a cybersecurity incident within the next 2 years
- 62% said they’ve had an incident within the past year
- 41% of those reporting an incident say it cost them $500,000.
Some of the most common external risks that enterprises face today include sensitive data in unknown locations, websites with paths to the corporate network, unknown SaaS applications, applications with 0 users, and misconfigured SSL certificates.
Once, it was believed you could keep an enterprise safe from cyberattack by monitoring the perimeter — but the perimeter is no longer definable. Suddenly all bets are off. Doing things the old way isn’t going to work. True security now requires being on the offensive.
How artificial intelligence is helping
Existing processes are now failing to manage risk. Over 75% of attacks are reported to have used vulnerabilities that were at least two years old. The average number of days to remediate critical risk vulnerabilities is 60. It’s virtually impossible to continuously analyze your security data across your entire attack surface, if you do it manually.
That’s why artificial intelligence (AI) is now being used to automate the process, making it much more efficient and highly effective.
AI allows you to quickly and accurately understand the context of your security data within the big picture of your enterprise and helps you to determine what actions to take first. This is important because you don’t have time to waste. Attackers are also using AI, and "Organizations need to adopt new defenses to fight back: the battle of algorithms has begun."
A risk management strategy needs to be driven by AI so it can properly contextualize your alerts and prioritize them. Amid all the noise of false alerts, it’s hard to avoid fatigue and burnout. It’s also nearly impossible to determine what needs remediating first, without AI. But knowing what to patch and when is pivotal, because it has been shown that patching the right 12% of vulnerabilities provides the same protection as patching all 100%.
Using Continuous Automated Red Teaming to secure your perimeter
Continuous Automated Red Teaming (CART) provides ongoing and automated simulated attacks on your system. It is agile and exacting when pinpointing threats, and because it is continuous, it can identify new threats and vulnerabilities as they emerge. This makes CART an essential part of a mature vulnerability management program.
Surviving today’s intense threat landscape requires automated penetration testing and an innovative vulnerability management plan based on AI, helping you to more quickly and accurately understand the context of your security data.
Breaches are too costly. The only way to prevent them is with a good offense. Cyberattacks will continue at a rapid pace, along with the ever-expanding attack surface. Hardening your attack surface is going to take everything technology has to offer, and right now, that’s AI.
Hadrian provides holistic security insights from a hacker’s perspective through the use of AI. Our active algorithms lead to the discovery of all your digital assets, both known and unknown. We contextualize your assets to understand how an adversary would conduct an attack.
