Breach and attack simulation (BAS) platforms allow companies to see weaknesses in their cyber infrastructures before a malicious hacker can exploit them.

Breach and attack simulation (BAS) is an approach to cybersecurity that uses advanced tools to imitate the attacks used by cybercriminals on companies’ digital infrastructure. The simulated attacks allow the professionals to see how and in what ways a company’s digital infrastructure may be susceptible to cyber threats.

While other forms of cybersecurity, such as firewalls and micro-segmentation, guard against cyberattacks, BAS serves to test cyber infrastructures’ attack preparedness. By imitating a variety of cyberattacks, BAS testing can better demonstrate to a company where and how it must improve its cybersecurity. These attacks include but are not limited to email infiltration, identity fraud, and ransomware. A company can maximize its cyber protection against existing threats using a BAS assessment platform through trial and error processes.

On a BAS platform, a cybersecurity or IT professional can select the type of attack they want to mimic. Afterward, the cyber security simulation software will deploy a digital agent that mimics the type of selected attack. The BAS software will monitor how its agent moves through the network and how successful it is. These factors will allow the platform to compile a report on potential weaknesses in a company’s cybersecurity setup.

The cyber attack simulation does not harm a company’s digital infrastructure. The generated reports give cybersecurity professionals a better idea about what they must improve in a company’s digital setup to guard against that attack type.

Unlike other cybersecurity practices like penetration testing where an individual attempts to breach a company’s network on the company’s behalf to discover how the organization can better improve its cybersecurity, BAS is automated.

Since BAS is an automated breach simulation, it can run at any time and discover ways to breach a company’s digital infrastructure that an individual tester may not have thought of. The reports generated by the breach and attack simulations’ results allow cybersecurity professionals to prioritize digital weaknesses and create better cyber defenses for an organization.

Since many BASs can run regularly, they give cybersecurity and IT professionals quicker notice about when a company’s system may be poorly prepared for a certain type of attack. These diligent tests allow professionals to improve on a cyber weakness more swiftly. The quicker response leaves a potential hacker less time to exploit an error.BAS platforms are often built on the information available through a global cybersecurity database called MITRE ATT&CK. The database keeps track of the methods cybercriminals use to break through companies’ cyber defenses. Since BAS tests are often based on information found in the MITRE ATT&CK framework, the tests can prepare a company for attacks it may not have previously heard of.

BAS platforms have existed for years. However, simulations and their purposes are always changing. New developments occur in the category regularly. Below are some of the offerings available for BAS that have been well-reviewed in recent months across different review websites.

The Security Validation platform by Picus Security is well regarded for offering a thorough way to test elements of a company’s cybersecurity infrastructure individually and collectively. However, overall customer sentiment also mentions the offering could be more comprehensive in how it simulates threats.

Overall customer feedback on the Exposure Management and Security Validation platform by Cymulate BAS states that it offers thorough and insightful reports. However, many customers also complain the Cymulate breach and attack simulation platform is limited in the testing it can perform at any given time.

The Enterprise platform by AttackIQ BAS is customizable and cost-effective, according to customer reviews of the product. However, there are issues regarding the set-up of a company’s cybersecurity infrastructure within the AttackIQ breach and attack simulation platform to provide accurate test results.

SafeBreach’s platform is considered a robust BAS platform with a customizable platform that provides helpful reports by customers. However, it is a resource-heavy platform that requires multiple individuals to manage effectively.

The Threat Simulator platform by Keysight is thought of as useful by customers because of its ability to run multiple simulations at once. However, the platform is complex and requires an administrator with extensive experience in IT and/or cybersecurity.

In its October 2023 report Invest Implications: Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2024: Continuous Threat Exposure Management, Gartner projects, “by 2026, organizations prioritizing their security investments, based on a continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) program, will realize a two-third reeducation in breaches.”

BAS platforms can be a crucial tool for the CTEM cycle. The CTEM cycle is designed so that cybersecurity and IT professionals can best use attack simulations to identify and eliminate threats to a company’s digital infrastructure.

BAS platforms will continue to be useful for a company’s cybersecurity toolkit, even though BAS itself does not actively guard against cyberattacks, because of how BAS helps cybersecurity and IT professionals fortify an organization’s digital defenses.

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