Breach Readiness Intelligence
Breach Readiness Intelligence, in the context of cybersecurity, refers to the proactive collection, analysis, and application of information to enhance an organization's ability to prepare for, detect, respond to, and recover from a cybersecurity breach. It's about shifting from a reactive stance to a more proactive and informed approach to incident management.
This type of intelligence goes beyond simply knowing about current threats. It encompasses understanding:
Threat Actor Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs): Gaining insight into how specific threat groups operate, their common entry vectors, tools they use, and their post-compromise behaviors. This allows organizations to build more targeted defenses and detection mechanisms.
Vulnerability Landscape and Exploitation Trends: Knowing which vulnerabilities are actively exploited "in the wild" and how quickly attackers leverage new weaknesses. This helps prioritize patching and defensive efforts based on real-world risk.
Past Incident Lessons Learned: Analyzing public breach reports, industry-specific incidents, and an organization's historical security events to identify patterns, common weaknesses, and effective response strategies.
Industry Benchmarks and Best Practices: Understanding what other organizations in similar sectors are doing for breach preparedness, including their investments in technology, processes, and people.
Regulatory and Compliance Requirements: Staying informed about evolving data breach notification laws, industry standards (like PCI DSS), and contractual obligations that dictate handling a breach. This ensures legal and compliance readiness.
Internal Strengths and Weaknesses: A realistic assessment of an organization's security controls, incident response capabilities, and available resources. This includes understanding the effectiveness of existing tools, the training levels of security staff, and gaps in coverage.
By integrating this intelligence, organizations can:
Improve Incident Response Plans (IRPs): Tailor IRPs to anticipated threats, ensuring that procedures are practical and effective for likely attack scenarios.
Enhance Detection Capabilities: Develop more precise threat detection rules and indicators of compromise (IOCs) based on known attacker TTPs.
Optimize Security Investments: Allocate resources more effectively by focusing on controls that address the most relevant and impactful breach scenarios.
Conduct Realistic Drills and Exercises: Design tabletop exercises and simulations that reflect current threat landscapes, testing the IRP and the readiness of response teams.
Strengthen Communication Protocols: Establish clear communication plans for internal and external stakeholders during a breach, considering legal, public relations, and customer notification requirements.
Accelerate Recovery Efforts: Have pre-defined strategies and resources to minimize downtime and data loss post-breach.
Breach Readiness Intelligence provides the strategic foresight needed to minimize the likelihood and impact of a successful cyberattack, ensuring that an organization can withstand and recover from even sophisticated breaches.
ThreatNG is an all-in-one external attack surface management, digital risk protection, and security ratings solution that can significantly help organizations with breach readiness intelligence.
External Discovery & Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG performs purely external, unauthenticated discovery, meaning it identifies assets and risks from an attacker's perspective without needing connectors. This is crucial for breach readiness, as it helps organizations discover unknown or rogue assets that could become entry points for attackers. ThreatNG monitors an organization's external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings. This continuous monitoring ensures that new exposures or changes to existing assets that could impact an organization's breach readiness are immediately identified.
Examples of ThreatNG's help:
Identifying unknown exposed systems: ThreatNG can discover systems, applications, and login pages that an organization may not have been aware of and that are externally accessible. If these systems are not adequately secured, they represent potential entry points for attackers. ThreatNG's continuous discovery helps ensure all such interfaces are known and managed, reducing the likelihood of a successful breach.
Detecting new vulnerable services: Through continuous monitoring, ThreatNG can identify newly exposed services on non-standard ports or newly deployed applications that might introduce vulnerabilities. This allows organizations to proactively address these potential attack vectors before they can be exploited.
ThreatNG performs a variety of external assessments that directly contribute to breach readiness intelligence:
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: ThreatNG analyzes the external attack surface of web applications, including domain intelligence, to identify potential entry points for attackers. This helps understand how easily an attacker could compromise a web application, a common breach vector.
Example: If ThreatNG identifies subdomains as "Missing Content Security Policy" , it signals a vulnerability that attackers could use for cross-site scripting (XSS) or other injection attacks. Understanding this susceptibility informs the organization to harden its public-facing applications against such attacks, making them more breach-ready.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: ThreatNG evaluates a website's susceptibility to subdomain takeover by analyzing subdomains, DNS records, and SSL certificate statuses. A successful subdomain takeover can lead to defacement, phishing, or malware distribution, all of which are breach scenarios.
Example: ThreatNG detecting a "Subdomain Takeover" vulnerability means an unmanaged asset could be hijacked and used by an attacker to host phishing pages or distribute malware. Identifying this susceptibility allows the organization to remediate it, preventing a potential breach vector.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This assessment considers compromised credentials, domain permutations, and email security presence. Phishing is a primary method for credential theft and initial access in many breaches.
Example: ThreatNG identifying "Domain Name Permutations - Taken with Mail Record" highlights a high-confidence signal for phishing infrastructure. Knowing this allows the organization to preemptively warn employees or block these domains, directly reducing susceptibility to breaches initiated via phishing. Similarly, "Compromised Emails" found by ThreatNG indicate leaked credentials, signaling a direct threat of unauthorized access that organizations must prepare for by enforcing MFA and strong credentials.
Data Leak Susceptibility: This derives from cloud and SaaS exposure, dark web presence (compromised credentials), and domain intelligence. Identifying data leakage points is crucial for preventing unauthorized disclosure during a breach.
Example: ThreatNG discovering "Files in Open Cloud Buckets" means sensitive information, potentially including customer data, is publicly exposed. This is a direct data leak vulnerability that attackers could exploit, and its identification allows for immediate remediation to prevent a breach.
Cyber Risk Exposure: This assessment considers certificates, subdomain headers, vulnerabilities, sensitive ports, and code secret exposure. These are all indicators of potential weaknesses that attackers can exploit.
Example: ThreatNG detecting "Invalid Certificates" or "Subdomains Missing Strict Transport Security (HSTS) Header" highlights weaknesses in data-in-transit protection. Attackers could leverage these for man-in-the-middle attacks, making identification crucial for breach readiness. The discovery of "Private IPs Found" in public DNS exposes internal network architecture and increases the attack surface, potentially bypassing network segmentation.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This assessment focuses on exposed sensitive ports, private IPs, known vulnerabilities, compromised credentials, and ransomware events/gang activity. It directly quantifies the likelihood of a breach or ransomware event.
Example: ThreatNG identifying "Ransomware Events" affecting the organization indicates a direct threat to data availability and integrity. This intelligence allows for immediate incident response activation and ensures that anti-malware and patching programs are robust.
Mobile App Exposure: This evaluates an organization’s mobile apps for exposed access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers. Breaches increasingly target mobile apps.
Example: ThreatNG discovering "Mobile Application Exposure Sensitive Information Found" means sensitive data, such as authentication or PII, is exposed within mobile applications. Knowing this lets the organization secure the app, preventing a mobile-specific data breach.
ThreatNG provides comprehensive reports including Executive, Technical, Prioritized (High, Medium, Low, and Informational), Security Ratings, Inventory, Ransomware Susceptibility, U.S. SEC Filings, and External GRC Assessment Mappings. These reports are invaluable for informing breach readiness strategies by:
Prioritizing risks: The prioritized reports help organizations focus on the most critical external risks, allowing them to allocate resources effectively to bolster defenses against the most likely breach scenarios.
Communicating posture: Executive reports can inform leadership about the organization's external security posture and breach readiness, supporting strategic decision-making and investment in security.
Informing incident response planning: Reports on "Ransomware Susceptibility" or "SEC Form 8-Ks" detailing past security incidents can directly inform and refine an organization's incident response plan, ensuring it addresses realistic threats.
ThreatNG's investigation modules provide detailed insights that are critical for building practical breach readiness intelligence:
Domain Intelligence: This module provides a comprehensive overview of an organization's digital presence, including DNS Intelligence, Email Intelligence, WHOIS Intelligence, and Subdomain Intelligence.
Example: Through DNS Intelligence, ThreatNG can find "Private IPs Found" in public DNS. This exposure increases the attack surface by revealing internal network information. Understanding this allows the organization to hide internal IPs, thereby reducing the risk of a breach through network reconnaissance.
Example: In Subdomain Intelligence, ThreatNG identifies "Subdomains with No Automatic HTTPS Redirect" or "Subdomains Missing Strict Transport Security (HSTS) Header". These issues expose data in transit to interception. Knowing these vulnerabilities allows the organization to implement proper encryption, making it harder for attackers to intercept sensitive communications during a breach.
Sensitive Code Exposure: This module discovers sensitive information, such as API keys, passwords, cryptographic keys, and configuration files, within public code repositories.
Example: If ThreatNG finds "Code Secrets Found" in a public GitHub repository, such as an AWS API Key, an attacker could use this to gain unauthorized access to cloud resources. This intelligence is crucial for breach readiness, prompting immediate revocation of credentials and improving secure coding practices to prevent source code-related breaches.
Dark Web Presence: Identifies organizational mentions, associated ransomware events, and compromised credentials on the dark web.
Example: Discovery of "Compromised Emails" on the dark web indicates that attackers may already have valid credentials to target the organization. This directly informs breach readiness by prompting the organization to enforce MFA, reset passwords, and enhance monitoring for suspicious login attempts.
Search Engine Exploitation: Helps users investigate an organization’s susceptibility to exposing information via search engines, including errors, sensitive information, and public passwords.
Example: ThreatNG has a facility that identifies "Errors on Subdomains" that expose sensitive details like database structure or stack traces, which provide attackers with valuable information for exploitation. Awareness of these exposures allows the organization to properly configure error handling and reduce information leakage, aiding attackers in planning a breach.
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache)
ThreatNG's continuously updated intelligence repositories provide vital context for breach readiness intelligence:
Dark Web (DarCache Dark Web): This repository includes compromised credentials (DarCache Rupture) and Ransomware Groups and Activities (DarCache Ransomware). It helps organizations understand the immediate threats from leaked credentials and active ransomware groups, allowing them to prepare targeted defenses and response plans.
Example: Access to "DarCache Ransomware," which tracks over 70 ransomware gangs, helps organizations understand the TTPs of prevalent ransomware threats. This knowledge enables the organization to bolster its defenses against specific ransomware attack vectors and refine its incident response plan for such events.
Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): This provides NVD (DarCache NVD), EPSS (DarCache EPSS), KEV (DarCache KEV), and Verified Proof-of-Concept (PoC) Exploits (DarCache eXploit), which provides a deep understanding of external vulnerabilities and their exploitability.
Example: "DarCache KEV" identifies vulnerabilities actively exploited in the wild. If ThreatNG discovers an internet-facing asset with a vulnerability listed in KEV, the organization knows this is a high-priority risk for immediate patching. This intelligence significantly accelerates the prioritization of remediation efforts to prevent a breach. "DarCache eXploit" provides direct links to PoC exploits, enabling security teams to reproduce vulnerabilities and understand their real-world impact to develop effective mitigation strategies, enhancing breach readiness.
Working with Complementary Solutions
When combined with other cybersecurity solutions, ThreatNG's capabilities create powerful synergies, significantly enhancing an organization's breach readiness.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Systems: ThreatNG's continuous monitoring identifies exposed assets and critical vulnerabilities on the external attack surface. This data can be fed into a SIEM system.
Example: If ThreatNG detects "Compromised Emails", the SIEM can correlate this information with internal login attempts or unusual activity from those accounts. This synergy provides real-time alerts and deeper context for investigating potential breaches, enabling faster detection and response.
Vulnerability Management (VM) Platforms: ThreatNG's external assessments, such as "Critical Severity Vulnerabilities Found" and "High Severity Vulnerabilities Found" on external subdomains, complement internal VM platforms.
Example: ThreatNG's findings can prioritize which externally visible vulnerabilities a VM platform should focus on for deeper, authenticated scans. This combined approach ensures that external and internal attack vectors are thoroughly assessed and addressed, improving overall resilience against breaches.
Incident Response (IR) Platforms: ThreatNG's detection of high-impact events like "Ransomware Events" or "Dark Web Mentions" of leaked data can automatically trigger response playbooks within an IR platform.
Example: Upon detecting a ransomware event, ThreatNG's data helps the IR platform quickly identify affected external assets and potential entry points. This accelerates containment and recovery efforts, minimizing the impact of a breach.
Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC) Tools: ThreatNG's "Code Secrets Found" capability identifies exposed credentials or sensitive information within public code repositories.
Example: This intelligence can be integrated into SSDLC tools to enforce policies that prevent the embedding of secrets in code and mandate the use of secure coding practices. This proactive measure reduces the likelihood of breaches stemming from insecure application development.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Solutions: ThreatNG's "Domain Security" analysis, identifying issues like missing DNSSEC or exposed hostmaster emails, provides actionable intelligence for DNS security solutions.
Example: If ThreatNG flags a missing DNSSEC, the organization can implement it using its DNS security solution, preventing DNS tampering that could redirect users to malicious sites during a breach. Similarly, exposed hostmaster emails can prompt the use of WHOIS privacy features to prevent social engineering attacks.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) Tools: ThreatNG's "Cloud and SaaS Exposure" assessment can work with CSPM tools.
Example: ThreatNG's discovery of "Files in Open Cloud Buckets" alerts the organization to external data exposure. A CSPM tool can then provide continuous internal auditing of cloud configurations to ensure these buckets remain secure and no other misconfigurations exist, strengthening the cloud's breach readiness.
