A chaotic threat landscape and rapidly changing attack techniques has organizations facing increased pressure to deal with persistent threats by developing and deploying new security controls and being able to identify and manage misconfigured controls.
Despite investing heavily in various security technologies, many organizations struggle to manage these tools effectively and they are left with gaps in their detection controls. This struggle often results from complex security infrastructures, siloed responsibilities, and a lack of cross-functional skills. To address these challenges, organizations are increasingly turning to Automated Security Control Assessment (ASCA) technologies. ASCA offers a proactive approach to security by continuously assessing, optimizing, and prioritizing technical security controls, ultimately reducing an organization’s exposure to threats.
The Persistent Problem of Misconfiguration and Detection Gaps
Misconfiguration of technical security controls remains a leading cause of security breaches. Even with an array of security technologies in place, organizations often lack the necessary resources and expertise to manage these tools effectively. This issue is exacerbated by the complexity of modern security infrastructures and the tendency for teams to operate in silos, with individual members focusing on specific tools rather than the overall security posture.
Through 2029, more than 60% of security incidents will be traced to misconfigured technical security controls.
Innovation Insight: Automated Security Control Assessment, Evgeny Mirolyubov, 29 August 2024
Periodic security configuration reviews, typically conducted against vendor best practices, are a common approach to addressing misconfigurations. However, these reviews often fall short because they do not fully consider the organization’s specific threat landscape. The dynamic nature of threats — including security configuration drift, an expanding attack surface, newly discovered vulnerabilities, and evolving attack techniques — makes it nearly impossible to maintain optimal security configurations without automation.
What is Automated Security Control Assessment (ASCA)?
Automated security control assessment (ASCA) is a security technology that continuously analyzes, prioritizes and optimizes technical security controls to reduce an organization’s threat exposure. ASCA identifies configuration drift, policy and control deficiencies, detection logic gaps, poor defaults, and other misconfigurations in security controls. It then uses identified weaknesses to recommend and prioritize remediation steps to improve security against organization-specific threats.
ASCA works by automating the mapping of an organization’s threat landscape to vulnerabilities, attack techniques, business contexts, and available detections and defensive capabilities. This automation reduces the manual effort required and helps prioritize findings based on a realistic view of the organization’s exposure. Unlike traditional approaches that simply verify the presence of security controls, ASCA evaluates and optimizes these controls against best practices, benchmarks, and the current threat landscape.
Integration with Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)
ASCA is critical for organizations implementing Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) programs. By continuously assessing technical security controls and integrating with exposure assessment and validation technologies, ASCA provides a comprehensive approach to managing threats. This integration is beneficial not only for mature organizations with established vulnerability and exposure management programs but also for those just beginning their security journey.
ASCA supports multiple stages within CTEM:
- Discovery: ASCA identifies misconfigurations in technical security controls to assess detection coverage and health to understand and identify gaps and exposure
- Prioritization: By overlaying security control and detection context with threat intelligence and the MITRE ATT&CK framework ASCA effectively prioritizes gaps and exposures based on the tactics, techniques, and adversary groups most relevant to your organization.
- Mobilization: ASCA provides specific mitigation guidance for implementing changes in technical security controls, such as configuration adjustments and custom detection rules.
Benefits of Deploying ASCA Technologies
Organizations that deploy ASCA technologies can expect numerous benefits, including:
- Enhanced Efficiency: ASCA minimizes human error and improves resilience to organizational changes, allowing security teams to operate more efficiently.
- Maximized Security Control Value: ASCA helps organizations get the most out of their existing security technologies, such as SIEM, EDR, email security, and network firewalls, by ensuring they are properly configured and updated.
- Improved Visibility and Benchmarking: ASCA provides visibility into the detection posture across the entire infrastructure and enables cross-organizational benchmarking.
- Support for Framework Adoption: ASCA facilitates the adoption of frameworks like CTEM by identifying misconfigurations, prioritizing exposures, and mobilizing security controls for better threat detection and response.
As cyber threats continue to evolve, organizations must adopt more proactive and automated approaches to managing their security posture. Automated Security Control Assessment (ASCA) technologies offer a powerful solution for continuously optimizing and prioritizing technical security controls. By integrating ASCA into your security strategies, organizations can enhance their resilience against threats, improve efficiency, and maximize the value of their existing security investments. As the digital landscape grows more complex, the adoption of ASCA technologies will be increasingly vital in maintaining robust cybersecurity defenses and aiding in reducing an organization’s threat exposure.