PlexTrac ConceptsOffensive Security

Offensive security, sometimes known as OffSec, is a proactive security practice that simulates attacks to uncover vulnerabilities throughout systems and networks. Often, offensive and proactive security are used interchangeably and include practices like penetration tests, red team exercises, vulnerability scanning and assessments, and risk assessments. Security teams use each of these to identify security gaps before threats can. 

There are many debates about the best way to improve a team’s offensive security capabilities. PlexTrac’s Offensive Security Maturity Model defines and orders five offensive security strategies into phases that can build your maturity from the low-hanging fruit to the most advanced form of testing. These five phases include:

1. Vulnerability Scans: These scanners perform basic automated tests to scan, detect, and classify weaknesses in your or your client’s infrastructure and assets.
2. Penetration Tests (Pentests): These are targeted and advanced tests run to “penetrate” an asset and find vulnerabilities beyond what automated scanners can detect.
3. Red Teams: A red team is a highly specialized group of offensive security testers working together to attack the organization’s defenses.
4. Adversary Emulation: Adversary emulation is defined by PlexTrac as the process of copying adversaries’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) exactly to test your organization’s defenses against real-world attacks. These TTPs are typically pulled from adversary emulation libraries, like MITRE’s Center for Threat-Informed Defense.
5. Adversary Simulation: While there’s often a naming dispute in the industry on the last two phases, PlexTrac has adversary simulation as the most mature phase. Adversary simulation is defined by PlexTrac as using all tactics at the tester’s disposal to compromise your organization’s defenses. The creative nature of this type of testing makes it the most similar to real-world attacks.   

If an organization is interested in evolving its offensive security strategy past traditional scanning and pentesting, we recommend the following:  

1. Document the processes: Make sure you have good runbooks that are easy to duplicate with a checklist of documented procedures.
2. Report effectively: Develop a clear report template with an executive summary so high-level stakeholders, like your CISOs and your board, get value out of that report. 
3. Keep up with technology: Stay ahead of the curve and learn some of the newer technologies that are becoming more prevalent in our industry. 
4. Test frequently: If you’re only pentesting once a year, there’s a lot of time for changes in the environment to affect your security. Instead, adopt a continuous testing strategy.
5. Communicate effectively: Show risk quantification or follow a risk-based approach to better communicate with shareholders about the different vulnerabilities or exploits.

PlexTrac multiplies the value of your offensive security efforts by serving as a control center for all manual and automated findings. Aggregate your offensive security data, prioritize risks, report rapidly, track remediation, and demonstrate progress over time all in the PlexTrac platform.  

See how PlexTrac maximizes your offensive security investments. Request a demo today. 

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