Security Solutions | 3 mins
The need for a cybersecurity makeover
The post-pandemic years represent the most turbulent and disruptive period of cyber attacks across industries. Cyber attacks are reported to increase by 600% after COVID-19, costing businesses worldwide $10.5 billion annually by 2025.
What's worse, the worldwide demand for security professionals far exceeds the supply of qualified workers. (ISC)2 CyberSecurity Workforce study reports more than 2 million unfilled security roles, and only 700,000 security workers joining in 2021.
The cyber security worker shortage
These numbers indicate that the cybersecurity expert shortage will not go away anytime soon. Meanwhile, time management is already a common problem within security teams, as they end up getting spammed with low-priority risks and false positives due to a lack of context.
The question for cyber security teams is how to deal with this ongoing talent shortage while focusing their time on vulnerabilities that matter. This is where the hacker’s perspective can help.
What is the hacker's perspective?
The hacker’s perspective is a top-down and outside-in approach to security, mimicking what a criminal hacker would do when infiltrating your system. When hacking a network, a criminal would figure out what technologies are running in your network, which assets relate to each other, how they impact the overall infrastructure, and which vulnerabilities they can exploit to make attack chains into the deepest parts of your network.
This approach is similar to black-box security testing, in which the security of a system is tested with little to no prior knowledge or privileged access. This can better inform a security team of the vulnerabilities that a criminal will try to exploit.
What is the advantage of the hacker’s perspective?
A criminal hacker will have a very different approach to looking for vulnerabilities than a security professional. In order to stay one step ahead of malicious actors, cyber security professionals should better understand the mysterious nature of a hacker mentality and how it operates.
Focus
White-hat Hacker at Hadrian, Jop Zitman, elaborates: “When you're a blue team, you're not really sure how a certain misconfiguration can impact a business. From the hacker’s perspective, you can see when something has gone wrong, as well as the direct impact of a vulnerability – this allows you to better prioritize risks.”
The value of the hacker’s perspective is about refocusing the time of security professionals on the actual risks that will be most likely exploited by cybercriminals, given the limited amount of time security teams have.
Context
Another important advantage of this perspective is risk contextualization. “Context is vital to determine how you approach a target. For example, a bank has different ‘crown jewels’ than a delivery service. Knowing what you’re attacking is key for the attack path,” explains Olivier Beg, Head of Hacking at Hadrian.
Traditional vulnerability scanners with constant testing are hard on companies’ infrastructure, potentially leading to alert fatigue and desensitization. The alternative, more lightweight solution is running scans only when useful, reducing the level of strain on your network. The hacker’s perspective is critical in providing context between assets, knowing what risks to prioritize over others, and which are more likely to be exploited by cybercriminals.
How Hadrian automates the hacker’s perspective
Hadrian delivers real-time exposure management for security teams through continuous security validation and event-driven architecture, while simultaneously hardening the hacker’s perspective for risk contextualization and prioritization.
Find and test your attack surface
Most enterprises are unaware of around 40-60% of their attack surface. Hadrian automates the discovery of your attack surface from the outside in to map your visible network.
Contextualize risks and their impact
By mapping your network and testing for vulnerabilities continuously, Hadrian is able to provide context for risks and prioritize them for your security team.
Screenshot showing how Hadrian links assets and risks
Verify and validate security vulnerabilities
Risk notifications come with detailed remediation steps for your security teams to resolve quickly. When risks are marked as resolved, Hadrian automatically validates fixes to ensure they’re resolved.
Hadrian platform maps your attack surface showing contexts between assets and helping your security team to visualize these constantly-changing asset relationships.
To get a holistic view of your attack surface from the hacker’s perspective, book your demo today.
