Why is a Cyber Attack Simulation Solution Important?

Cyber criminals continually adapt their methods, making it harder and harder for even professionals to identify the latest threats. It's a constant cat-and-mouse game where security experts devise technology to stop attacks, and cyber-criminals create a new way to bypass security. 

Administrators are just one of the staff members that must be able to identify threats. Employees across the organizations are also perfect targets for threat actors. These users are much less technical and can be much more naïve to the common red flags presented during sophisticated attacks.
 

What is Cyber Attack Simulation?

A cyber-attack simulation is precisely what it sounds like – it's a fake strategic attack that looks like the real thing to educate users and provide them with a real-world scenario that they can use to practice their cyber defenses. Usually, simulation involves phishing emails to identify when users fall victim to email-based threats. Most data breaches start with a phishing email, so it’s a primary attack vector for cyber-criminals.

Attack simulations are only sometimes for email-based threats. A full simulation could include physical threats, social engineering, or scanning infrastructure for cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Simulations are tracked and recorded so that organizations can identify gaps in their current security awareness training and determine necessary future training for employees. Any real-world scenarios can be used to educate employees, but they're also helpful for corporations to identify gaps in their insider threat defenses.

 

How Does a Cyber Attack Simulation Work?

Before you begin a simulation, consultants might review your current infrastructure and discuss your concerns. Organizations might have more significant problems with the HR or Finance department employees than others, but testing everyone within the organization for any education gaps is essential. For example, customer service could be tricked by phishing or social engineering threats and divulge sensitive customer information.

After collecting information about an organization's infrastructure and employee workflow, security consultants put together a plan and let stakeholders know that the cyber attack simulation will commence. Only some employees will be aware of the attack simulations because everyone must be tested for their ability to identify and defend against phishing and social engineering threats. For onsite simulations, consultants might test for physical threats like piggybacking and social engineering.

The time it takes for a simulation depends on the consultation and the type of simulation. It takes time to simulate social engineering calls, send groups of people phishing simulation email messages, and test for piggybacking vulnerabilities. As simulations commence, consultants collect data for analysis after completion.

After data is collected and the simulation is over, consultants provide stakeholders with reports. Reports include statistics on employees successfully being tricked for any specific attacks, ones that identified and deflected an attack, and any vulnerabilities found from automated scans. In a phishing simulation, statistics include usernames for people clicking a malicious link, opening a malicious email message, and divulging sensitive information after clicking a link and landing on a web page asking for credentials or other data.

 

Benefits of Using a Cyber-Attack Simulation

Performing an attack simulation might seem like an unnecessary cost, but empowering employees to identify threats can save you high costs in violations, litigation, loss of revenue, and loss of customer loyalty and trust. Implementing cyber awareness training and using cyber-attack simulations to test for educational gaps are two proactive ways to stop data breaches and future struggles from a single compromise.

A few benefits organizations get with cyber-attack simulations:

• Better cyber defenses: Employees identify threats and know how to report the threat and stop it from successfully stealing data.
• Confidence in employees: Instead of second-guessing themselves, employees are prepared and know the red flags from common threats, especially those familiar with phishing and social engineering.
• Improvements in customer trust: Customers want to know that their data is safe and that an organization implements effective cybersecurity. Customer trust is essential when convincing people to provide their payment information and continually order services or products.
• Better compliance regulation: Most organizations have at least one compliance regulatory body that they must follow. Compliance regulations require corporations to do whatever is necessary to reasonably protect customer data, and cyber-attack simulations are one more step towards better data protection.
• Reduced IT administrator overhead: A single compromise puts tremendous pressure on your IT team to detect, contain, eradicate, and investigate threats. It could take an IT team months to perform all measures necessary to remediate a compromise from a single threat. When employees proactively stop threats, the IT team has a much smaller overhead compared to dealing with a compromise.
• Reduce organizational risks of insider threats: Insiders are the biggest threat to a corporate network environment and their stored data privacy. When employees know the red flag indicators for a phishing or social engineering threat, they stop them rather than become a victim, which is essentially the primary reason for a successful compromise.

Every one of these benefits preserves revenue and lowers the cost of litigation. Litigation is costly, and it can take years to settle. Millions of dollars are spent on litigation, and a significant data breach often requires some monetary relief for those affected. If an organization is found to be non-compliant or negligent in handling customer data, it can cost millions in fines and reparations to customers. It's essential to comb through compliance requirements to ensure you follow every demand, but security awareness training and cyber-attack simulations prepare employees for phishing and social engineering. 

 

How SafeTitan Helps Organizations and Managed Service Providers

SafeTitan is a proven, well-rated cyber-attack simulation service that helps businesses understand the cybersecurity landscape and take strides to protect themselves from common threats proactively. It focuses on phishing, but it can be useful for social engineering when coupled with phishing.

We also aim to help managed service providers. A managed service provider (MSP) has the added overhead of protecting potentially hundreds of corporate environments. Providing an MSP’s customers with security awareness training and cyber-attack simulations offers a reduced risk of being the victim of a compromise, which can be tremendously stressful with weeks of overhead to remediate the threat. Educating clients and their employees will help stop many of the common phishing and social engineering threats so that an MSP’s services can run much more smoothly.

It's crucial that implementation is easy to understand and doesn't take excessive overhead, and SafeTitan has a simple setup with migration support for phishing simulation campaigns. Corporate and MSP customers get detailed reports so stakeholders can review analytics and decide on the next steps for better cybersecurity education. 

Cyber-attack simulations include advanced threats, so employees are introduced to real-world scenarios that often cause data breaches in some of the most secure environments. The SafeTitan phishing simulation product has proven results that better educate employees and reduce risks of threats across all departments within your organization.

The SafeTitan gamification system makes it more enjoyable for employees to learn cybersecurity, and testing only requires less than 10 minutes of their time, ensuring that security awareness does not interfere with important employee productivity. It integrates with Microsoft Outlook, Office 365, Teams, Azure Active Directory, Active Directory Federations Services (ADFS), Single Sign-On (SSO), and Google Suite. Because it works with several environments, the SafeTitan security awareness solution is flexible and affordable, with very little maintenance and implementation overhead.

Don’t let your employees mistakenly cost you millions after a data breach. Book a free SafeTitan demo and see how we can help you protect sensitive corporate data.