Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV): The Intersection of Emulation and Simulation

Introduction

Understanding the differences between adversary emulation and simulation is important as they are not the same when securing your attack surface against real-world attacks. One of the key methods in proactive security is Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV), a core component of Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) that ensures organizations continuously assess their security posture against real-world threats. While AEV primarily falls under adversary simulation, it incorporates elements of adversary emulation when needed, making it a dynamic and adaptive security testing approach.

AEV helps security teams understand their weaknesses by simulating attacker behavior, allowing them to refine their defenses before actual threats emerge. However, it is essential to understand the differences between adversary simulation and adversary emulation – two distinct approaches that serve different security objectives. Understanding these differences ensures that enterprises adopt an effective offensive security strategy based on both their business and security goals.

What is Adversary Simulation vs. Adversary Emulation?

Security leaders must consider their security objectives and how they align with business goal before selecting between adversary emulations and adversary simulations. There is overlap between the two – as AEV can combine activities associated with both adversary emulation and simulation – but first let’s explore the definitions of each and how they differ?

What is Adversary Simulation?

Adversary simulation is a strategic cybersecurity assessment designed to measure an enterprise’s ability to detect, respond to, and recover from cyber threats. By simulating real-world attack scenarios, this approach evaluates security processes, team coordination, and incident response effectiveness. It helps enterprises uncover potential weaknesses, refine their defenses, and enhance overall cyber readiness against a wide range of attack techniques.

What is Adversary Emulation?

Adversary emulation is a focused security testing method where cybersecurity experts, often red teams, mimic the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of real-world threat actors. Core frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK® is used for adversary emulation in red teaming while OWASP Top 10, for example, can support red team operations when assessing certain types of threats, whether web-based, AI-specific, or otherwise.

Adversary Emulation Vs. Simulation

How AEV Integrates Aspects of Both Emulation and Simulation

Rather than combining adversary emulation and simulation into a single hybrid model, AEV operates within adversary simulation but incorporates targeted emulation when necessary. This allows enterprises to achieve a balanced approach, benefiting from both the realism of emulation and comprehensive assessment capabilities of simulation within the CTEM framework.

AEV is not a strict fusion of emulation and simulation but rather a simulation-driven validation process that integrates emulation techniques as needed. This ensures that enterprises not only test for known threats but also prepare for unknown evolving attack scenarios, making it an essential element of proactive cybersecurity within CTEM.

1. Adversary Simulation in AEV

• AEV validates an enterprise’s ability to detect, respond to, and mitigate threats by simulating a wide range of attack scenarios.
• It includes attack exercises beyond technical exploitation, such as incident response drills, phishing campaigns, insider threat simulation, and security awareness assessments.
• The focus is on readiness assessment – ensuring the people, processes, and technologies work together to defend against threats.

2. Adversary Emulation in AEV (Where Applicable)

• While AEV is simulation-driven, it often leverages adversary emulation techniques to test defenses against specific real-world attack tactics.
• This is executed using frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK®, where AEV may replicate known threat actor behaviors to evaluate how security controls respond to particular TTPs.
• However, AEV does not focus solely on emulation – instead, it applies emulation selectively within a broader, continuous validation process.

How To Choose the Right Approach for Your Organization

Choose Adversary Emulation if:

• Your primary goal is to test defenses against a specific threat actor.
• You need a focused evaluation of how well your security controls detect and respond to an attack.
• Your security teams want to refine its security strategies based on real-world attack patterns.

Choose Adversary Simulation if:

• You want to assess the overall security posture of your organization.
• Your focus is on evaluating security awareness, incident response, and risk management strategies.
• You aim to identify gaps in policies, procedures, and team coordination in handling threats.

For maximum effectiveness, enterprises should consider integrating both approaches, using emulation for deep-dive security assessments and simulation for comprehensive cyber resilience testing.

Challenges and Solutions in Adversary Testing

1. Resource Constraints

Emulation and simulation require specialized skills and tools, which may be limited in some organizations. Security providers normally use traditional manual, human-led red teaming but as AI has become an integral part of cybersecurity, some innovative providers like BreachLock provide autonomous pentesting and red teaming.

2. AI Automated Attacks

Cyber threats are constantly changing and becoming more sophisticated as attackers leverage AI to automate reconnaissance, craft highly personalized phishing attacks, evade detection through adaptive malware, and exploit vulnerabilities at an unprecedented scale and speed.

3. Balancing Reality and Risk

Creating realistic attack scenarios is integral for effective adversary testing, but if not carefully controlled, these simulations can introduce unintended operational disruptions such as:

• System downtime
• Degraded network performance
• False positives that overwhelm security teams

Striking the right balance requires controlled execution, a predefined scope, and coordination with blue teams to ensure that testing does not inadvertently impact business operations.

4. Interpreting Results

Adversary testing generates large volumes of data, making it challenging to distill key insights from simulated attacks. Security practitioners must differentiate between critical vulnerabilities that require immediate action and lower-priority findings, all while correlating results with real-world risks. Without evidence-based results, contextual analysis, and clear reporting, enterprises may struggle to translate test findings into actionable security improvements that enhance their security posture.

Adversary Testing Solutions that are Integral to AEV

I. Leverage Automation and AI

AI-driven security tools significantly enhance adversary simulation and emulation by automating reconnaissance, vulnerability discovery, and attack execution while adapting to the threat landscape. These tools can mimic real-world attacker behaviors at scale with minimal human intervention, providing rapid insights into potential attack paths and exploitable weaknesses making testing more efficient and repeatable. Example of technology solutions that leverage AI are:

• AI-powered Security Testing: Uses AI to simulate real-world attack tactics, generate evasive attack patterns, and identify weak points in security defenses.
• Autonomous Pentesting: Deploys AI-driven penetration tests that continuously probe networks, applications, and cloud environments for vulnerabilities.
• Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS): BAS platforms that continuously test security controls by mimicking attack techniques.
• Red Team Platforms: Automate the execution of adversary tactics and red teaming exercises based on built-in attack scenarios, MITRE ATT&CK, and ongoing threat intelligence, mimicking real-world threats to assess defensive capabilities.
• Threat Intelligence Integration: Uses AI to correlate real-time threat data with adversary simulations to enhance real-world attack scenarios.

Benefit: By leveraging automation, AI, and autonomous pentesting and red teaming, enterprises can scale their adversary testing, reduce the manual workload on security teams, and identify attack paths more efficiently.

II. Continuous Security Testing and Automated Red Teaming

Cyber threats continue to grow more complex, making one-time adversary testing insufficient. Continuous security testing ensures that enterprise’s defenses are regularly tested and refined against emerging TTPs. Automated security testing and continuous red teaming work together to provide real-time assessments of an enterprise’s cyber readiness.

• Autonomous Pentesting for Continuous Assessment: Runs scheduled or on-demand pentests that adapt to changes in the attack surface and continuously identifies new vulnerabilities as they emerge while validating the effectiveness of mitigation controls.
• Autonomous Red Teaming: Conducting autonomous red teaming to conduct ongoing testing exercises through an automated solution ensures that real-world attack scenarios are executed that test cyber readiness and security control effectiveness over time.
• Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS): These platforms simulate sophisticated attacks to test detection and response capabilities.
• Threat-Informed Defense Frameworks: Use MITRE ATT&CK and emerging threat intelligence to refine adversary testing strategies.

By implementing continuous security testing and autonomous red teaming, enterprises take a proactive approach to stay ahead of cyber threats and ensure offensive security measures remain effective as attackers adapt their tactics.

III. Red Team Collaboration with AI and Automation

Adversary testing is most effective when red teams, blue teams, and security operations work collaboratively to simulate real-world attacks in a controlled environment. Autonomous security tools and AI-enhanced red teaming allow enterprises to evaluate detection, response, and mitigation capabilities continuously, while purple teaming ensures offensive and defensive teams work together to improve cyber resiliency.

• Autonomous Red Teaming: Uses AI to mimic adversary behavior, allowing enterprises to exploit security controls with greater efficiency with real-world attack scenarios and threat intelligence that is continuously updated for greater scalability and efficiency.
• Autonomous Pentesting for Red Team Support: Provides continuous attack simulations that red teams can analyze and use to refine offensive strategies.
• Purple Teaming Facilitate real-time collaboration between offensive (red team) and defensive (blue team) security operations in real-world attack and response exercises.
• Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR): Integrates pentesting and red teaming test findings to automate attack responses and correlate red team insights with real-world threat intelligence.

Collaboration between autonomous red teaming, human red teams, and defenders ensures that enterprises continuously improve their ability to detect, respond, and mitigate threats in real-world attack scenarios.

Executive Buy-in and Training for Continuous Security Testing

For adversary testing to be effective, leadership must understand its value and allocate the necessary budget, resources, and personnel to support proactive security initiatives. Boards and executives are more likely to invest in security testing when they see quantifiable improvements in risk reduction, compliance, and operational resilience. Offensive security solutions that align with Adversarial Exposure Validation technologies like those listed above can achieve a measurable ROI that includes:

• Security Metrics and Reporting Dashboards: Use AI-driven analytics to provide leadership with clear insights into a secure attack surface and strong security posture.
• Autonomous Pentesting and Red Teaming for Risk Visualization: Demonstrate real-time risks with continuously updated attack simulation data and findings.
• Tabletop and Incident Response Exercises: Simulate executive-level decision-making scenarios to improve crisis management skills.
• Regulatory Compliance Mapping: Align adversary testing and mapping with security regulations, helping executives justify investment in continuous testing.

By securing executive buy-in and using continuous security testing through autonomous pentesting and red teaming, enterprises ensure that adversary testing remains a strategic priority for offensive security.

Conclusion

Adversary simulation and emulation are powerful tools in modern offensive security strategies. While emulation helps validate defenses against specific attack patterns, simulation provides a broader assessment of an enterprise’s overall security readiness.

Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV) takes this step further by continuously testing how an enterprise’s attack surface responds to real-world adversary tactics. By combining AI-driven automation, autonomous pentesting and red teaming, and executive engagement, organizations can systematically validate their exposure to evolving threats and proactively mitigate risks.

Implementing these solutions at scale ensures that adversary testing is continuous, actionable, and aligned with business objectives. To effectively safeguard your digital assets, leverage AEV alongside adversary simulation and emulation – whether through human-led or autonomous pentesting and red teaming.

Contact BreachLock security experts today to determine the best approach for your organization and strengthen your defenses against the modern threat landscape.