Bishop Fox has announced the results of a study, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, exploring enterprise adoption and use of offensive security tools and techniques to more effectively harden environments and assets.
The study found that 64 percent of enterprises are employing red teaming in some capacity, whether building their own internal team, employing external resources, or a combination. Additionally, more than half will increase investment in the function over the next 12-24 months, with nearly a quarter reporting significant increases in red teaming.
The study report is the result of a survey of nearly 700 respondents, nearly 70 percent of which comprised of organizations of 5,000 employees or more.
The report underscores that despite substantial investments in threat intelligence and defensive technologies, there are levels of persistent exposure that can only be addressed by combining offensive and defensive strategies. It highlights how forward-leaning enterprises are taking matters in their own hands and leveraging attackers’ tactics, techniques and procedures against themselves. This enables them to identify weaknesses and close them down before threat actors discover them, as well as limit the scope of impact of any compromise that subverts defences.
Other notable findings in the report include:
- The top three threats driving offensive security investments are ransomware (41 percent), social engineering (40 percent), and cloud vulnerabilities (39 percent)
- More than half (52 percent) say employing offensive testing is effective or highly effective in defending against the top three threats.
- Nearly half of organizations are planning to conduct red team exercises at least monthly, with 26 percent planning to do so continuously
- More than half prioritise their red team exercises around tabletop exercises (63 percent), ransomware readiness (55 percent), and data breach scenarios (51 percent)
- Internal red teams are already in place, or in planning stages, in 70 percent of those surveyed.
The success of offensive security in combating attacks is driving growth across all offensive security categories, an indication that the market tipping point is fast approaching. These indicators include:
- Growth in additional offensive security use cases in the last 18 months, including cloud migration (41 percent), new app releases (40 percent), and new technology adoption (44 percent).
- Additionally, the business drivers that overlay the use cases include improving attack surface visibility (40 percent), accelerating zero day response (42 percent), and meeting compliance and regulatory requirements (42 percent).
- Finally, 62 percent of respondents express confidence or high confidence in their ability to identify assets and exposures.
