Automated Pentesting and Red Teaming: A Powerful Approach for Stronger Cybersecurity

According to IBM Security’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2023, the average ransomware deployment time has fallen from 60+ days in 2019 to just 3.85 days in 2021. This shows that ransomware attackers are now moving faster than ever before. In addition to ransomware, modern organizations are also vulnerable to many other types of cyberattacks, including phishing, business email compromise (BEC), and distributed denial of service (DDoS).

It’s obvious that threat actors are waging a sophisticated cyberwar on organizations on multiple fronts. To protect their business-critical assets, companies must proactively assess their security defenses from the viewpoint of adversaries, and then act quickly to strengthen these defenses. The easiest and most reliable way to do this is with automated pentesting and red teaming.

What is Automated Pentesting and Red Teaming?

Red teaming exercises aim to emulate the tactics and techniques of real-world adversaries to test specific systems or data in an organization’s environment. Pentesting aims to compromise this environment to identify its exploitable vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

In the past, red teamers and pentesters used various manual techniques and tactics, as well as their own knowledge and judgment to meticulously simulate real-world attacks, identify vulnerabilities in the target systems, and then assess the impact of attacks on the target and organization. Automated pentesting is a different pentesting approach, where automated tooling is used to carry out the testing activities that were previously done by human testers.

A unified and automated pentesting and red teaming solution like BreachLock leverages cutting-edge technologies like AI to automate many red teaming and pentesting activities. Automation ensures that these security-critical activities can be completed faster and more frequently, providing stronger, continuous, year-round protection from adversaries in a cost-effective manner. Furthermore, cutting-edge solutions like BreachLock leverage a standardized, built-in framework to enable consistent and regular benchmarks of unique attacks, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), security controls, and processes, offering enhanced predictability, consistency, and accuracy for pentesting and red teaming processes and workflows.

Factors Driving the Need for Automated Pentesting in Red Teaming

In the Hype Cycle for Security Operations 2022, Gartner highlighted many emerging security operations tools that organizations should consider adopting in the coming years. One such tool is an “automated penetration test and red teaming tool.” Here’s why:

1. The need for proactive self-assessment of the attack surface
   Today’s organizations need to take a more proactive approach to cybersecurity, which requires self-assessing their attack surface and understanding what makes them vulnerable to attacks. According to Gartner, “penetration testing and red teaming engagements play an important role in organizations’ capabilities to validate their exposure and attack surface.” Automated pentesting can help them achieve this goal and thus become more proactive about their cybersecurity risks and needs.
2. Frequent self-testing is vital to stay ahead of adversaries
   Frequent testing is vital to consistently find and mitigate security weaknesses in an organization’s environment. Unlike manual testing, an automated pentesting and red teaming as a service allows security teams to conduct pen tests and red team exercises faster and more frequently.
   They can leverage AI and automation to identify more exploitable vulnerabilities than they would be able to do with manual testing alone. They can then harness their own judgment and PTaaS providers like BreachLock to address these weaknesses and reduce the company’s threat exposure.
3. Manual pentesting and red teaming is costly
   Manual pentests and red teaming involve substantial human effort and time, which significantly impacts the cost. According to Gartner, automated pentesting can reduce the costs of red teaming and pentesting. This is because automation streamlines the testing process, which accelerates vulnerability identification, prioritization, and mitigation, thus reducing the need for (costly) human inputs.
4. Organizations can focus on addressing the most critical vulnerabilities first
   Gartner believes that “recent progress in automation promises to almost fully automate pentests and some of the red team activities.” Even if they cannot fully automate these activities, organizations can still benefit from an automated pentesting and red teaming solution.
   The solution will proactively test target systems from the attacker’s perspective to identify common security issues and newly discovered vulnerabilities that may have been missed during manual testing. Businesses can then focus their limited resources on prioritizing and addressing the most critical vulnerabilities first.
5. The “democratization” of red teaming
   Since red teaming is a complex, time-intensive, and expensive endeavor, it is usually undertaken by larger organizations with large cybersecurity budgets and teams. Furthermore, per Gartner, “human-led red teaming programs are difficult to initiate because they require a specific set of expertise, processes, and tools that can be expensive to develop.” With automation, organizations of any size can set up a red teaming and pentesting program to strengthen their security posture.

The Importance and Advantages of Automated Pentesting in Red Teaming

Both red teaming and pentesting are important cybersecurity practices because they enable organizations to identify their security weaknesses and understand how real-world adversaries may exploit them. They can then use this understanding to strengthen their security defenses and protect their assets from harm. No wonder the size of the red teaming and pentesting market is expected to double from $133 billion in 2022 to $266 billion in 2028 according to the 2023 Global Cybersecurity, Red Teaming, and Penetration Testing Industry Research Report.

But these benefits notwithstanding, red teaming and pentests are time- and resource-intensive activities. Also, a fair amount of expertise is needed to plan and execute each activity, prepare reports, and make recommendations for security improvements.

Due to these challenges, many businesses undertake red teaming and pentesting only periodically. But the cyberthreat landscape is evolving very quickly and new threats are emerging at an alarming rate, so periodic testing will not help any organization to strengthen their defenses or become more cyber-resilient.

Automation can help ease these challenges. An AI-enabled automated pentesting solution like BreachLock enables organizations to achieve all the security benefits of red teaming and pentesting – in a faster, more efficient, and more cost-effective way. Automated pentesting and red teaming is also advantageous in the following ways:

Improved cyber risk management
Sometimes, red team exercises and pentests do not cover every aspect of an organization’s environment. Consequently, some weaknesses may not be identified or addressed, leaving the organization vulnerable to all kinds of cyberattacks.
With an automated pentesting and red teaming solution, companies can test their entire environment at any time. They also get a more comprehensive view of their security posture and threat landscape at any given time. They can then implement appropriate and timely controls to mitigate threats and prevent costly exploits.
Stronger 3rd-party risk management
Many businesses rely on numerous third-party vendors and software. Any of these entities can create serious security risks that must be identified and addressed on priority. Automation simplifies these tasks, allowing organizations to maintain a secure, low-risk supply chain.

Simplified compliance
Many regulatory bodies mandate pentesting and red teaming as a condition of compliance, particularly for businesses dealing with sensitive customer data. These include PCI (for PCI DSS) and the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (for HIPAA). For compliance with some other regulations like SOC2 and ISO 27001, pentesting and/or red teaming are not mandatory. However, conducting pen tests and red teaming exercises can enable organizations to better satisfy regulators’ requirements and simplify the compliance journey, so many compliance and security experts recommend undertaking these activities.
By reducing the time and effort required for red teaming and pentesting, an automated solution helps businesses to meet their compliance obligations much more easily than they would be able to do with manual security testing processes and workflows.

Conclusion

Organizations of all sizes can benefit by adopting automated pentesting and red teaming. By implementing an AI-powered, cloud-based pentesting solution and harnessing the human expertise of a PTaaS provider like BreachLock, they can reduce testing costs, improve testing frequency, enhance risk management, and strengthen their security posture.
To learn more about the benefits of automated pentesting and red teaming for your organization, schedule a free discovery call with BreachLock.

About BreachLock

BreachLock is a global leader in PTaaS and penetration testing services offering human-delivered, AI-powered solutions integrated into one seamless platform and a standardized, built-in framework that enables consistent and regular benchmarks of unique attacks, Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs), security controls, and processes to deliver enhanced predictability, consistency, and more accurate results in real-time, every time.