LEA Global News & Insights

In August 2022, the Cyber Accreditation Body (AB) announced that Voluntary Assessments of Organizations Seeking Certification (OSCs) would begin under the authority of the DoD’s Joint Surveillance Program. Under this program, an approved CMMC Third-Party Assessment Organization (C3PAO) conducts the assessment in coordination with the Defense Industrial Base Cybersecurity Assessment Center (DIBCAC). As of this writing, three of these assessments have been conducted (although not finalized) and information on how the assessments have been going is making its way into the CMMC ecosystem.

Do you know where vulnerabilities are hiding in your environment? Chances are you don’t, and a hacker might just find them for you. It’s a risk you can’t afford to take, but you can prevent it with penetration testing.

Unfortunately “hacks,” “scams,” and “rug pulls” have become some of the most used terms in a digital asset investor’s vernacular. Sophisticated attacks on cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and other digital assets are among the leading reasons cryptocurrency has not achieved mainstream adoption. This emerging asset class turns off many investors who do not have the appetite to hold such risky and volatile assets that come with numerous security concerns.

You might not know this, but penetration testing is no longer the gold standard for improving your defenses against cyberattacks. Why? It’s only half of the picture. Penetration testing identifies vulnerabilities and demonstrates risks through exploitation, but it doesn’t go further than that. Purple-teaming does. If that’s an unfamiliar term, here’s what you should know.

Penetration testing, or pen testing, has become a common practice for helping organizations take a proactive approach to protect against cyber threats. Per a 2015 survey, 92% of organizations with a cybersecurity program in place conducted pen testing. My guess is that number may only have increased over the past three years due to increased business compliance requirements and publicly revealed compromises exposed in the media. However, we can’t expect the way we approached pen testing in 2015 to provide the same level of protection today. As the attack techniques cybercriminals use have evolved, the methods of pen testing organizations have as well. Today, there are a variety of penetration testing methods organizations can use to identify and resolve potential weaknesses in their cybersecurity programs. One method that is becoming increasingly important for businesses in every industry is internal network pen testing.