Adversary Services
Adversary testing simulates an attack, testing your team’s capacity to detect, respond to an attack and to learn and improve.
You’ll never know your organisation’s true capacity to respond to an event until it's put to the test through simulated attack scenarios.
How we can assist:
What is an Adversary Simulation?
Why Adversary Simulation Services Matter to Your Organisation?
External Attack Surface Assessment
Adversary Cyber Security Testing
What is an Adversary Simulation?
The importance of adversary simulation services in your organisation
What is an Adversary Simulation?
Understanding how threat actors operate is critical to building an effective cybersecurity strategy that protects your organisation from a myriad of risks. A company cybersecurity policy that doesn’t consider how malicious actors ply their trade and where your specific vulnerabilities lie is unlikely to protect you from criminals intent on stealing your data, wreaking havoc with your systems and damaging your reputation.
Adversary simulation services in New Zealand
Adversary simulation services assess your organisation’s true capacity to respond to an event by carrying out a detailed assessment of your threat surface and then testing your defensive capability through simulated attack scenarios.
A variety of different tools and tactics are used in adversary services. Using current understanding into what tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) are performed by known threat actors, monitoring activity on the dark web and conducting a thorough analysis of your environment to understand how an attacker could breach your defences.
Why Adversary Simulation Services Matter to Your Organisation?
Organisations face a variety of different threats from a broad spectrum of different attackers. Understanding which threats relate to your organisation, which should be actively defended against, which should be monitored and which risks aren’t relevant is challenging in an ever-changing threat landscape.
Having the requisite skills and tools to detect, protect and respond to the cyber-criminals requires an understanding of where an attacker is likely to strike, how to block that attack and how to respond should a malicious actor gain a foothold in your systems.
Adversary simulation services in New Zealand include a number of different techniques including red teams who carry out reconnaissance and attempt to break into your systems, purple teams who build and test plans to block attackers, and external threat assessments that assist your organisation to uncover exposed and forgotten assets. Using the intelligence and knowledge from these teams allows your organisation to better understand the risks it faces and create mitigation plans to ensure your critical information and system assets are as well protected as possible.
Red Team
Red Teaming comes in many flavours but relies on the fundamental premise: the replication/simulation of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) performed by known threat actors.
A Tesserent Red Team Engagement is a complex, comprehensive and multi-layered attack simulation on an organisation.
A Red team uses a custom set of tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) to assess your organisation's cyber resiliency against real-world adversaries. The Red Team assessment starts with the alignment/definition of objectives/goals and rules of the engagement, then defines the test plan and finally execution of the plan.
By mimicking a real cyber-attack, the output of your Tesserent Red Team engagement will provide your organisation with a detailed snapshot of the current level of your cyber resilience, covering your people, processes, and your technology. The report will guide you on how to prioritise improvements to your detection and response capabilities helping your company stay ahead of the adversaries.
Red Team exercises focus on all the vectors that real adversaries would. To simulate a real-world scenario, only key stakeholders are made aware of the exercise.
Purple Team
Purple Teaming uses intelligence gathered on threat actors to build a test plan to replicate the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) that are most likely trying to breach your organisation's cybersecurity posture, usually targeting people, processes and technology but not limited to it.
Purple Team engagements merge the Red Team and Blue Team to simulate TTPs from known threat actors to implement or improve your organisation's cybersecurity posture. Usually, when doing a Purple Team exercise, the parts involved in the simulation select the threat actor based on information provided by Threat Intelligence teams. This is intended to tailor the defensive teams regarding threats targeting your organisation's industry and other demographics.
As an outcome, a Purple Team engagement is the best tool to check the detection and response in place, as well as to identify blind spots and solve them at execution/testing time.
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Gold Team
Testing your response plan and your crisis management skills is a vital step in ensuring a successful response to an incident. A Gold Teaming exercise provides a safe environment to test your policies, plans and procedures and hone your response skills before they’re needed.
We’ll collaborate with your team to develop a credible scenario that will involve, not just your IT team, but all facets of the business typically involved in a crisis response.
A tabletop exercise / Gold Team engagement is a discussion-based exercise that is aimed at testing and validating the current incident response plan and playbooks of an organisation. A facilitator will drive the discussion by presenting a scenario and various injections based on the scenario created. The scenario is typically customised according to the target organisation’s technology stack and is based on the most current threat intelligence.
The following parts of the business are recommended to be involved in a Gold Team engagement:
- IT team
- Legal
- Public Relations and Internal Communications
- Senior Management
Potential scenarios include testing your response to a:
- Ransomware Breach,
- Distributed Denial of Service Attack,
- Malicious Insider, or
- Data Breach.
At the end of a Tesserent Gold Teaming engagement, you’ll know what your next steps are for improving your Incident Response readiness.
External Attack Surface Assessment
Tesserent External Attack Surface Assessment will assist your organisation to uncover exposed and forgotten assets.
Our methodology is designed to simulate what a real threat actor would focus on and will utilise similar tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) as a Red Team would do.
At the end of the engagement, you will receive a report that will outline your organisation’s attack surface.
Adversary Cyber Security Testing
As businesses increasingly rely on the internet to conduct day-to-day operations, the threat of cybercrime has never been greater. Hackers can disable networks, steal sensitive information, and damage or destroy critical data with little effort and few clues as to their identity. In order to protect themselves from these threats, businesses must employ a variety of security measures, including adversarial cyber security testing.
Adversarial cyber security testing is a process by which businesses simulate attacks against their systems from real or simulated attackers. This allows businesses to identify vulnerabilities in their systems and fix them before they can be exploited by hackers. By identifying and fixing these vulnerabilities, businesses can improve their overall security posture and reduce the risk of a successful attack.
What is an Adversary Simulation?
An adversary simulation is a form of cyber security testing conducted by Tesserent which simulates various attack scenarios in order to identify vulnerabilities. This type of simulation allows businesses to understand how an attacker would act and react in order to gain access and exploit the target systems. By identifying weaknesses, vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, organisations can remediate the issues before they are exploited by hackers. With adversary simulations, organisations have the opportunity to identify and address risks before they result in a costly data breach or compromised assets.
The importance of adversary simulation services in your organisation
Organisations face various types of attacks from various types of attackers. Understanding the dangers a company faces that can have an impact on its reputation is surprisingly challenging in a constantly evolving threat landscape. In order to be effective in preventing cybercrime a person must understand the types of attacks they may face, and how best to stop such attacks and react when the threat comes to their system. Tesserent will help you with adversary simulation services to protect your organisation.
Completely challenge your security defences
Attackers target processes, technology and people. Until we get savvy about the latest attack tactics and techniques, vulnerabilities will not go unnoticed. Using red teams or advisory simulation will push your firm towards enhanced or stronger security plans. Using these tests you can gain real insight into risk and identify your weaknesses.
How Can Tesserent Help New Zealand Organisations?
Tesserent has a highly skilled and regarded technical assurance and testing team that has helped to detect risks and protect Australian and New Zealand organisations for many years across a wide variety of different industries. The knowledge they have uncovered has allowed companies across the ANZ region to enhance protection of their data and IT systems, brand and reputation.
Working with your business, security and IT team, and other stakeholders, Tesserent can carry out a number of different adversary services. Our methodology can simulate what a real threat actor would focus on and use similar tactics, techniques and procedures to highlight where your vulnerabilities lie. Our experienced teams of penetration testers, red teams and threat analysts can find the chinks in your armor, help you bolster your detection capability, and ensure you have robust plans in place to respond to cyberattacks.
At the end of the engagement, you will receive a detailed report, packed with actionable advice you can use to boost your organisation's security posture and ensure you are maximising the return on your information security investment.
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Using a Red Team to boost your cyber defences
Frequently Asked Questions
What are adversaries in cyber security?
In cybersecurity, adversaries are individuals, groups, or organisations that pose a threat to a computer system or network by attempting to gain unauthorised access, steal sensitive information, or disrupt normal operations. Adversaries can range from amateur hackers seeking personal gain to sophisticated groups sponsored by nation-states or organised crime.
What is adversarial testing?
Adversarial testing has become an efficient method to check the effectiveness of the current security measures and identify the areas that need more protective actions.
What are the types of cyber security testing?
The types of cyber security testing include penetration testing, network security testing, application security testing, and mobile security testing. Additionally, there are more specialised tests such as social engineering simulation, blue team simulations, red teaming, and adversarial cyber security training. Each type of test has its own set of objectives and methods.
What is the difference between Red Teaming and Penetration Testing?
Where a standard penetration test focuses on a single environment or system i.e. what’s in scope as identified by the organisation, a Red Team aims to be widespread i.e. everything identified by the Red Team (except anything flagged for exclusion by the organisation).
A Red Team simulates, within the bounds of their engagement, an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT). They often take far longer to plan and to execute than a tightly defined Penetration test.
A Red Team exercise challenges the full spectrum of your security operations. It provides a risk-managed approach to the organisation’s attack surface. In addition, the Red Team targets the human elements within a company, often neglected by annual security testing.
What’s the difference between Red Teams, Blue Teams, Purple Teams and Gold Teams?
The “red team” is your attacking team. They are mimicking a potential real-life scenario and using the stealthy techniques a real adversary would use, trying to assess your organisation's cyber resiliency. A red team engagement takes planning and time – exactly as a real hacker would.
The “blue team” is your security team. They are being tested (usually without prior knowledge of the simulated attack), on their capacity to detect and respond to a situation.
In a “purple team” engagements Red Team and Blue Teams collaborate to plan and simulate tactics, techniques and procedures from known threat actors. The aim is to implement or improve your organisation's cybersecurity posture, usually targeting people, processes and technology but not limited to it. Gaps can be identified and closed in real-time.
“Gold team” exercises test your crisis management team – across the organisation, not just IT. It might also involve Legal, PR and other business divisions. It is a tabletop exercise designed to test crisis management policies and procedures and how well the crisis team communicates and executes.
Speak with a Tesserent Adversary Services consultant today to help determine the right service for your organisation.
What is an adversary in cybersecurity?
An adversary in cybersecurity is an individual, group, or organisation that attempts to breach or compromise computer systems, networks, or other digital assets for malicious purposes.
What are the different types of adversaries in cybersecurity?
Adversaries in cybersecurity can be classified into four main categories: cybercriminals, hactivists, state-sponsored actors, and insider threats.
How do adversaries gain access to computer systems and networks?
Adversaries use a variety of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to gain access to computer systems and networks, including phishing, social engineering, malware, and brute-force attacks.
What are some effective strategies for defending against adversaries in cybersecurity?
Effective strategies for defending against adversaries in cybersecurity include implementing strong passwords and multi-factor authentication, regularly updating software and security patches, conducting regular security assessments, and providing cybersecurity awareness training to employees.
How can organisations collaborate to defend against adversaries in cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity companies like Tesserent collaborate to defend against adversaries in cybersecurity by sharing threat intelligence, best practices, and information about common vulnerabilities and attack patterns.
What role does government play in defending against adversaries in cybersecurity?
The government plays a critical role in defending against adversaries in cybersecurity by setting standards and regulations for cybersecurity, conducting research and development of new cybersecurity technologies, and collaborating with the private sector to share threat intelligence and respond to cyber threats. Additionally, law enforcement agencies investigate and prosecute cybercriminals and other malicious actors.
What is an external attack surface assessment?
An external attack surface assessment is the process of identifying and evaluating the potential vulnerabilities of an organisation's external-facing systems, including websites, networks, applications, and devices, to identify potential entry points for attackers.
Why is an external attack surface assessment important?
An external attack surface assessment is important because it helps organisations to identify and mitigate potential security risks, vulnerabilities and exposures that may be exploited by malicious actors.
Who can perform an external attack surface assessment?
An external attack surface assessment can be performed by a cybersecurity consultant, a specialised cybersecurity company like Tesserent or an internal cybersecurity team with adequate knowledge, experience and resources to conduct the assessment.
What are the steps involved in an external attack surface assessment?
The steps involved in an external attack surface assessment include reconnaissance, enumeration, vulnerability scanning, and exploitation. The assessment may also include manual penetration testing and social engineering.
What is the difference between vulnerability scanning and penetration testing?
Vulnerability scanning involves using automated tools to identify potential vulnerabilities in an organisation's external-facing systems, while penetration testing is a manual process that simulates a real-world attack scenario to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in the systems.
What are some common vulnerabilities that an external attack surface assessment can identify?
Common vulnerabilities that an external attack surface assessment can identify include unpatched software, weak passwords, insecure network configurations, and unsecured APIs.
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