Cymulate launches Attack Surface Management and Vulnerability Prioritization Technology solutions to enhance security posture validation

24 Sep 2021

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Cymulate, the industry standard for SaaS-based Continuous Security Validation, has announced the launch of two new solutions, to enable businesses to validate their security technologies and policies.

Attack Surface Management (ASM) discovers exploitable external assets, and Vulnerability Prioritization Technology (VPT) that integrates with vulnerability scanners, to reduce risk exposure time on internal assets. These new offerings empower security teams, to efficiently prioritise vulnerabilities and mitigation steps, ensuring a shorter time to remediation.

Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs)

With the exponential increase in Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), organisations are in a constant race to discover, prioritise and remediate vulnerable assets. Current vulnerability management platforms do not take into account the effectiveness of compensating controls and their ability to detect and/or prevent the exploits, associated with the discovered vulnerabilities.

They end up using uncontextualised vulnerabilities and information that leads to inaccurate prioritisation, which wastes time trying to push patches that do not always address the problem.

Enhancing vulnerability management

In order to simulate a full-scale attack, a company needs to go back to the reconnaissance stage

In order to simulate a full-scale attack, a company needs to go back to the reconnaissance stage and look for all the organisation's weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Cymulate's platform maps these, find the weaknesses, and gathers all the initial intelligence information about the organisation.

ASM and VPT immediately improve vulnerability management programmes through these identified exploitable assets and integrates with the VM platform, to contextually prioritise the discovered vulnerabilities. By demonstrating in real-time, which exploits can or cannot circumvent the cyber security controls, Cymulate reduces the overwhelming vulnerability scan results, down to an actionable, prioritised and manageable list.

“Our customers were facing an ongoing challenge of patching vulnerable assets,” said Avihai Ben-Yossef, the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Cymulate.

Cymulate’s platform contextualises the vulnerabilities

Avihai Ben-Yossef adds, “We looked at the possibility of acquiring a company that collects attack surface data, for contextualising the vulnerabilities presented by Cymulate, but after much research, we saw that existing ASM solutions do not offer organisations, the full coverage that they need, to optimally produce a contextualised vulnerabilities prioritising list. We are proud to have developed a solution in-house that meets the needs of our customers.”

“Security challenges have greatly intensified this past year, creating more daily problems for security teams to handle and stay on top of, however, many lack the resources to deal with them,” stated Eyal Wachsman, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Co-Founder of Cymulate, adding “Controlling the risk of vulnerability patching, in line with the enterprise's security posture, makes the difference between businesses losing a few minutes or hours of downtime, versus days or months.”

Eyal Wachsman adds, “Equally, enabling the visibility of higher risk penetration vectors, where attackers are most likely to start their campaigns from, is just as critical. With these additional capabilities, more customers find Cymulate solving multiple use cases as a holistic security posture validation platform.”

Attack Surface Management (ASM)

Cymulate's Attack Surface Management (ASM) technology emulates real attackers, to identify digital assets

Cymulate's Attack Surface Management (ASM) technology emulates real attackers, to identify digital assets (such as domains, IP addresses, and more) and assess their exploitability against the organisation's security policies and solutions. With findings mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK’s framework's TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures), business enterprises can take the necessary mitigation steps.

A record number of nearly 20,000 vulnerabilities were disclosed in 2020, of which 57% were classified as critical or high severity, yet patching remains a struggle for many organisations, due to limited resources, the complexity of legacy systems, inability to prioritise and internal pressures. This new solution offered to security professionals and executives assesses the vulnerabilities' potential impact on the security posture and prioritises the patches to implement, assuring business continuity.

Vulnerability Prioritization Technology (VPT)

Cymulate's Vulnerability Prioritization Technology (VPT) solution integrates with leading third-party vulnerability management solutions including Qualys, Tenable, Insight, and Microsoft Defender.

The solution cross-references information on vulnerabilities provided by these vendors, with the analysis from Cymulate's security posture validation platform offering a practical view of compensatory security controls over unpatched vulnerabilities in the network.

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Sensor data fusion for more reliable intrusion alarm systems

Intrusion alarm systems are currently facing a growing number of potential error sources in the environment. At the same time, alarm systems must comply with increasingly demanding legal requirements for sensors and motion detectors. As a future-proof solution, detectors equipped with Sensor Data Fusion technology raise the level of security while reducing the risk of cost- and time-intensive false alarms. This article provides a comprehensive overview of Sensor Data Fusion technology. Anti-masking alarms A cultural heritage museum in the South of Germany for decades, the installed intrusion alarm system has provided reliable protection on the premises. But suddenly, the detectors trigger false alarms every night after the museum closes. The system integrators are puzzled and conduct extensive tests of the entire system. When they finally identify the culprit, it’s unexpected: As it turns out, the recently installed LED lighting system in the museum’s exhibition spaces radiates at a wavelength that triggers anti-masking alarms in the detectors. Not an easy fix situation, since a new lighting system would prove far too costly. Ultimately, the integrators need to perform extensive detector firmware updates and switch to different sensor architecture to eliminate the error source. This scenario is by no means an isolated incident, but part of a growing trend. Need for reliable detector technology Legal requirements for anti-masking technology are becoming stringent in response to tactics by criminals The number of potential triggers for erroneous alarms in the environment is on the rise. From the perspective of system operators and integrators, it’s a concerning development because every false alarm lowers the credibility of an intrusion alarm system. Not to mention steep costs: Every false call to the authorities comes with a price +$200 tag. Aside from error sources in the environment, legal requirements for anti-masking technology are becoming more stringent in response to ever more resourceful tactics employed by criminals to sidestep detectors. What’s more, today’s detectors need to be fortified against service outages and provide reliable, around-the-clock operability to catch intruders in a timely and reliable fashion. Sensor Data Fusion Technology In light of these demands, one particular approach has emerged as a future-proof solution over the past few years: Sensor Data Fusion technology, the combination of several types of sensors within one detector – designed to cross-check and verify alarm sources via intelligent algorithms – holds the keys to minimising false alarms and responding appropriately to actual alarm events. 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Prominent false alarm triggers in intrusion alarm systems The following factors emerge as frequent triggers of false alarms in conventional detectors: Strong temperature fluctuations can be interpreted by sensors as indicators of a person inside the building. Triggers range from floor heating sources to strong sunlight. In this context, room temperatures above 86°F (30°C) have proven particularly problematic. Dust contamination of optical detectors lowers the detection performance while raising susceptibility to false alarms. Draft air from air conditioning systems or open windows can trigger motion sensors, especially when curtains, plants, or signage attached to the ceilings (e.g. in grocery stores) are put in motion. Strong light exposure directly on the sensor surface, e.g. caused by headlights from passing vehicles, floodlights, reflected or direct sunlight – all of which sensors may interpret as a flashlight from an intruder. 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First step detection technology In Bosch sensors, engineers added First Step detection to trigger instant alarms upon persons entering a room Over the next few years, sensors were also equipped with sensors detecting visible light to catch flashlights used by burglars, as well as temperature sensors. In Bosch sensors, engineers added proprietary technologies such as First Step detection to trigger instant alarms upon persons entering a room. But experience in the field soon proved, especially due to error sources such as rats and other animals, that comprehensive intrusion detection demands a synergetic approach: A combination of sensors aligned to cross-check one another for a proactive response to incoming signals. At the same time, the aforementioned bandwidth expansion in Wi-Fi routers and LED lighting systems required detectors to implement the latest circuit technology to avoid serving as ‘antennas’ for undesired signals. 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Get the most from investments in building security

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How to build smarter, more secure cities from the ground up

Today, we live in a technology-obsessed age. Whichever way you look, it’s hard to avoid the increasing number applications, products and solutions that continue to redefine the boundaries of what we previously thought possible. From autonomous vehicles and edge computing to 5G and the Internet of Things, all facets of our lives are continuing to evolve, thanks to an endless stream of differentiated innovations. In this article, we’ll be focusing on the latter of these - the Internet of Things (IoT). Deployment of IoT technologies Smart homes, smart utilities, smart retail, smart farming, smart supply chains and many of the other ‘smart’ versions of sectors that we’re already familiar with, are all called as such because of the implications of IoT. Indeed, it is a technology that has manifested itself in billions of devices, which today underpin the truly transformational levels of connectivity that we see across industries of all shapes and sizes. The statistics speak for themselves. 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