The New Advisory Frontier: Expanding QSA Services with ThreatNG
In the highly specialized field of Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance, a Qualified Security Assessor's (QSA) role has evolved significantly. Your credibility rests on providing comprehensive and accurate PCI DSS assessments, but today's market demands that you move beyond mere audit fulfillment to a value-added advisory model. While traditional methods like ASV and internal vulnerability scans are fundamental, they inherently offer a limited, point-in-time view of a client's security posture. ThreatNG provides the continuous, real-world intelligence necessary to truly understand your client's external attack surface and digital risk, allowing you to uncover critical exposures that traditional methods miss. This empowers you to deliver a more robust security validation, guide clients toward a continuous compliance model, and ultimately, enhance the value of your advisory services.
ThreatNG's capabilities are purely external and frictionless, operating from an attacker's perspective with "no connectors". This unique, unauthenticated approach complements your existing efforts by uncovering risks that traditional, network-centric scans miss, creating powerful opportunities for your practice.
Beyond the Audit: New Business Opportunities with ThreatNG
By integrating ThreatNG into your practice, you move past "mere audit fulfillment" and into a more profitable, strategic advisory role. The intelligence you gain from ThreatNG allows you to offer new, high-value services that address real-world threats:
Opportunity: Proactive Threat Intelligence Integration: ThreatNG’s reports offer "concrete, real-world evidence" of threats that traditional methods often miss, such as the discovery of "compromised email addresses". You can use this data to offer "enhanced advisory services on proactive threat intelligence integration, incident response plan testing... and advanced MFA implementation strategies". This helps clients address real-world risks before they lead to a breach, making your services invaluable year-round.
Opportunity: Secure Development Lifecycle (SDLC) Consulting: ThreatNG’s frictionless discovery capability identifies exposed developer resources and environments that traditional scans often miss. You can use a finding like an exposed admin page on a development server (e.g., developer.example.com ) to "question SDLC practices and data segregation". This provides a direct opportunity to offer "specialized secure SDLC consulting services" and help clients implement "stricter access controls for development environments" and "secret management solutions" to prevent data leakage.
Opportunity: Ransomware Preparedness Workshops: ThreatNG’s intelligence on "Ransomware Events" from its DarCache repository enables you to evaluate a client's incident response plan against "real-world, current threats". For instance, if ThreatNG identifies active ransomware events related to your client's industry, you can ask specific questions about their preparedness. This creates a powerful opportunity to offer "specialized ransomware preparedness workshops, tabletop exercises, and consulting on integrating real-time threat intelligence into incident response processes".
Opportunity: Web Application Security Consulting: ThreatNG's reports can provide a detailed list of "affected subdomains" with a "Missing Content Security Policy". You can leverage this to offer specialized web application security consulting, including secure coding training, and services to help clients implement Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) and other security headers to strengthen their posture against common web attacks.
Opportunity: Third-Party Risk Management Advisory: ThreatNG's "Supply Chain & Third Party Exposure" assessment provides an independent evaluation of vendor security. By continuously monitoring the external posture of a client's vendors, you can offer advisory services on managing third-party risks, helping your client verify their compliance (PCI DSS 12.5.2) and address vulnerabilities in their broader payment ecosystem.
Opportunity: Advanced Vulnerability Prioritization Services: Traditional scans often prioritize based on CVSS scores alone. ThreatNG's DarCache Vulnerability intelligence, however, integrates EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) for the likelihood of exploitation and KEV (Known Exploited Vulnerabilities) for active exploitation in the wild. You can use this advanced context to offer a service that helps clients move beyond raw scores and prioritize remediation efforts on vulnerabilities that pose an "immediate and proven threat", enhancing compliance with PCI DSS 6.2.3 and 11.6.1.
Opportunity: Cloud and SaaS Security Consulting: ThreatNG's "Cloud and SaaS Exposure" capability identifies critical misconfigurations, such as "Files in Open Cloud Buckets". This gives you a direct opportunity to offer specialized consulting on securing these modern assets, helping clients meet PCI DSS requirements for data retention (3.1.1) and access control (7.2.1) in cloud environments.
Opportunity: Personnel and Governance Risk Advisory: ThreatNG provides unique insights by analyzing external signals like "Layoff Mentions" and "SEC Filings". You can use these findings to offer specialized advisory services that connect external signals to a client's internal controls, such as their employee termination process (PCI DSS 12.5.1), risk assessment process (PCI DSS 12.3.2), and security oversight.
Opportunity: External PCI Scoping and Inventory Validation: ThreatNG’s ability to identify "Applications Identified", "Mobile Applications", and "Private IPs Found" that may be "unknown or unmanaged" to a client presents an opportunity to offer a high-value service for validating the completeness of their PCI scope. This ensures that all internet-facing components that could interact with cardholder data are identified and brought into the compliance purview.
Opportunity: External Threat Alignment and Adversary Simulation: ThreatNG's "External Threat Alignment" directly maps identified vulnerabilities and exposures to MITRE ATT&CK techniques, showing how an adversary might achieve initial access and persistence. You can use this advanced intelligence to offer clients advisory services on adversary simulation and threat modeling, which moves them beyond generic compliance and helps them build a truly resilient defense.
Strengthening Client Relationships and Your Bottom Line with ThreatNG
By integrating ThreatNG into your practice, you move past "mere audit fulfillment" and into a more profitable, strategic advisory role. ThreatNG provides the "continuous, real-world intelligence" that enhances the value of your assessments, strengthens your relationships with clients, and solidifies your position as a trusted security partner. This allows you to guide your clients toward a "continuous compliance model" and help them achieve a more resilient and secure posture against modern threats, all while mitigating your own "reputational risk".
Ready to see how ThreatNG can help you enhance your PCI practice? Check out a free evaluation of your organization's external attack surface today.
