Cyber Attack Surface Assessment
Using advanced reconnaissance techniques to discover weak points and strengthen your defences.
As organisations become increasingly digital, more data slips into the public domain which threat actors then use to launch successful cyber attacks.
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What is an Attack Surface Assessment?
In an Attack Surface Assessment, we use the same Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) techniques, that threat actors routinely use when planning an attack. In doing so, we are able to identify what information attackers would be able to determine about your organisation and assess how this could be leveraged as part of attack campaign. We can then support you in remediating those findings, making cyber attacks less likely in the future.
It is a systematic process used to identify and evaluate all the potential entry points through which cyber threats could compromise your networks or systems. It involves discovering and cataloging all assets, including hardware, software, and network components, to create a comprehensive map of the organisation’s digital footprint. This includes elements such as IP addresses, domains, servers, endpoints, and even third-party connections.
The ultimate goal of a Cyber Attack Surface Assessment is to provide a clear picture of your business’s attack surface, prioritise risks and recommend mitigation strategies.
Challenges Addressed by Attack Surface Assessments
Distributed Environments
The current move away from traditional on-premises IT to third party cloud-based services means that organisations have increasingly complex infrastructure which opens them up for IT assets to be mis-managed.
Lack of Specialist Skills
To replicate attacker reconnaissance tactics safely and effectively requires comprehensive knowledge of attacker tactics, techniques and tools. Few SMBs have this skill set available in house.
Poorly Trained Staff
Generally, employees don’t intend to cause harm to organisations. However, information about IT systems (e.g. misconfigured web-facing servers) allows attackers to collect information that can help launch a successful cyber attack.
Initial Access Brokers
Some threat actors, referred to as ‘Initial Access Brokers’ make a profit by selling access to other threat groups. These actors are highly skilled at identifying vulnerabilities in an organisation’s internet-facing assets to gain access to their internal networks.
VIP Digital Footprints
It is not just technology that is targeted in the reconnaissance phase of a cyber attack. Threat actors also seek to gain information about high-value personnel, that allows them to conduct highly targeted and successful phishing attacks.
What Our Clients Say
Benefits of Attack Surface Assessments
Our Attack Surface Assessments builds a complete digital footprint for your organisation from an attacker’s perspective so you know exactly what is available to them and can take steps to restrict it.
Attacker Perspective
Attack Surface Assessments give you a clearer understanding of how your organisation and its infrastructure may be viewed by a threat actor looking to target you. This allows you to take proactive steps to address weaknesses before an attack is commenced.
Improved Risk Management
An attack surface assessment allows your teams to prioritise vulnerabilities that pose the most significant risk to your most critical assets and operations. In better understanding your digital footprint, you are able to make informed decisions on how best to allocate and deploy security resources.
Compliance Readiness
Regular attack surface assessments help you to identify areas of your infrastructure that may not align with the standards required by regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA and PCI-DSS or loss of data that may contravene these regulations.
Reduced Attack Surface
Our analysts minimise the number of exposed assets and services that may be targeted by cyber threat actors. This can include deactivating services that are no longer required, closing unnecessary ports and removing defunct login pages.
Incident Response Planning
Understanding your digital footprint can help your organisation to begin to understand the attack vectors which a threat actor may leverage to gain access. Armed with this information, you can test your security operations and refine existing incident response plans.
Improved Customer Trust
By implementing attack surface assessments, you can clearly demonstrate your commitment to security to both clients and partners. This in turn can help to build trust in your organisation, increasing the likelihood of you securing and retaining key customers and partnerships.
Peace of Mind
Knowing that your web facing infrastructure has been expertly assessed for potential weaknesses allows you to focus on core business activities. You can rest assured that any potential risks will be reviewed, assessed and remediated.
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Case Study: UK-based Law Firm
Client Challenge
A rapidly growing UK based law firm were expanding their online presence, through increased use of social media to connect with, secure and retain clients.
The company relies on its reputation for excellence and wanted to ensure that their web-facing infrastructure and online assets were being appropriately and securely managed.
Our Approach
CyPro deployed its Attack Surface Assessment analysts to conduct quarterly assessments of the organisation’s digital footprint. Key components of the approach included:
- Cybersquatting: Identification of newly registered websites that used the client’s brand to attract site visitors.
- Social Media Impersonation: Reviewed popular social media platforms including Facebook, X and Instagram to identify accounts impersonating the client.
- Infrastructure Review: Mapped the organisation’s internet facing assets and identified where internal systems and documents could be accessed publicly.
- Executive Risk Assessment: Located online profiles of the Senior Leadership Team to identify personal information that could be leveraged in a phishing attack.
- Document Leakage: Undertook clear and dark web reconnaissance to identify the publication of sensitive and confidential internal documents.
Value Delivered
Rapid Response
Our dedicated team was able to detect, escalate, and mitigate threats in real time, often resolving issues within minutes rather than days.
Cultural Shift
Educated users about how personal and company information could be leveraged by threat actors to successfully conduct cyber attacks.
Focused Testing
Liaised with CyPro’s SOC to define ‘real world’ attack simulation scenarios that accurately represented threats to the business.
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Who Needs Attack Surface Assessment?
Attack surface assessment isn’t just for large enterprises. Rapidly growing SMBs are at greater risk of losing control of their digital estate as they increasingly adopt cloud services.
- Fast Growing Companies: Companies undergoing rapid growth or scaling through mergers and acquisitions may end up with a complex and decentralised digital infrastructure, with no clear idea of which cloud technologies have been approved for business use. Attack surface assessments can help such organisations better understand their environment and identify and stop the use of non-approved technology.
- Companies Targeted By Cyber Criminals: Industries like finance, healthcare, and telecommunications are frequent targets for cyber attacks due to the sensitive data they handle. Attack surface assessments can help these organisations to identify likely attack paths so they can take proactive action to defend against threats.
- Organisations With Compliance Requirements: Companies in regulated sectors must adhere to strict standards (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS). Attack surface assessments can help organisations to identify where they may be in breach of compliance requirements – for example by publicly sharing personal information.
Who Doesn’t Need Attack Surface Assessments?
- Micro-Businesses With Minimal Digital Infrastructure: Very small businesses with limited online presence and digital resources, such as a local service provider (e.g., a small plumbing business), may only need basic cybersecurity measures rather than regular attack surface assessments.
- Organisations Using On-Premise Infrastructure With No Cloud Services: Organisations that utilise on-premise infrastructure, with no cloud services or social media may benefit more from regular penetration testing and the implementation of data loss prevention controls.
Our Approach
At CyPro, we follow a methodical, client-centred approach to attack surface assessment to ensure that a complete digital footprint is built up of your IT estate.
Scope & Planning
We begin Attack Surface Assessments with an onboarding workshop. In this session we will work to understand what your digital environment should look like, enabling us to easily recognise abnormalities. We will agree and define an appropriate scope for the assessment, which may include reviews of staff social media profiles, reviews of the dark web, evaluation of website metadata and focussed assessment of key individuals.
Reconnaissance
Our team of experienced analysts will define and execute a collection plan which aligns to the agreed assessment scope. They will then collect relevant information using a range of automated and manual collection techniques, in order to replicate the methodology deployed by threat actors conducting reconnaissance activities.
Risk Analysis
Our assessment team use structured analytical techniques in order to assess the data collected holistically, rather than in isolation. This means that we are able to identify weaknesses in your environment which can be ascertained through the aggregation of relevant information.
Reporting
On completion of the assessment you will receive a comprehensive report detailing the information identified, and analysis of how this could be utilised by a motivated threat actor. The report will also, where possible, provide risk remediation or reduction strategies to allow you to make fast and effective security improvements to your digital footprint.
Collaboration
Our assessment will work closely with your internal teams throughout the assessment process in order to fully and accurately assess potential threats. This may include members of your marketing, networking/infrastructure, technology and leadership teams depending on the scope of the assessment.
Continuous Improvement
We regularly review feedback from customers, alongside new developments in reconnaissance techniques across the cyber security landscape. This allows us to ensure that the service continues to accurately reflect the techniques which are being used by threat actors.
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Your Team
Jonny Pelter
Jonny is a Founding Partner at CyPro and executive group level CISO who has worked closely with the British intelligence agencies NCSC and GCHQ.
Originating from KPMG and Deloitte, Jonny has a wealth of experience across numerous sectors including technology, critical national infrastructure, financial services, oil & gas, insurance, betting, pharmaceuticals and utilities.
Jonny is a leading cyber security expert in the UK, having featured on national media for his professional commentary such as BBC News, iPlayer, Telegraph and Times Radio.
Additional Consultants
Originating from Deloitte, Ellie brings a wealth of experience and expertise to her role as a Cyber Security Manager.
She specialises in the field of threat intelligence, enabling clients to proactively identify and respond to threats before they escalate into issues.
Technically adept and highly knowledgeable, Ellie excels at developing robust security strategies tailored to each client’s unique needs.
Known for her warm and collaborative approach, Ellie is a natural motivator and people person, making her a trusted partner in implementing and operating effective security controls.
Jordan is an experienced and highly skilled senior SOC analyst who is certified as a GIAC incident handler (GCIH). He specialises in ensuring the efficient onboarding of clients to our SOC service, focusing on deploying detection rules tailored to each client’s specific threat landscape.
Jordan excels in identifying and responding to sophisticated cyber threats, leveraging his deep knowledge of threat detection tools and techniques to provide proactive protection.
Previously serving as a SOC Manager for the UK Home Office, Jordan brings extensive experience in managing large-scale security operations for critical government infrastructure. He is responsible for overseeing 24×7 monitoring, incident response, and the continuous improvement of detection strategies within our 24×7 SOC.
A graduate in Criminology, Elsie also has an MSc in Crime Science with Cyber Crime from UCL. She brings a solid foundation in cyber security principles and practices.
With a research background in human factors in cyber security, Elsie brings a proactive approach to analysing security landscapes. Highly analytical and committed to supporting clients, she excels at crafting solutions to enhance organisational resilience.
Elsie is proficient in identifying and addressing cyber threats, and committed to staying ahead in the ever-evolving digital security landscape, while her analytical skills, honed through experience and academic studies, enable hrt to extract valuable insights to inform strategic decisions.
Enthusiastic and knowledgeable, Elsie strives to be a catalyst for change in security paradigms, and is dedicated to developing innovative approaches to combat emerging threats.
With a degree in Cybersecurity specialising in Digital Forensics, Gianluca brings a robust academic foundation to the table. His educational background is complemented by hands-on experience in a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) environment, where he has honed his skills in delivering Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and Managed Extended Detection and Response (MXDR) services to a diverse clientele across the globe.
In his role, he has demonstrated exceptional proficiency in blue team operations, excelling at identifying, analysing, and mitigating cyber threats. His expertise extends to fortifying organisational security through proactive defence strategies and comprehensive threat management. He is adept at leveraging advanced security tools and technologies to safeguard critical assets and ensure compliance with industry standards.
His commitment to continuous learning and staying abreast of the latest cybersecurity trends and threats underscores his dedication to protecting organisations from evolving cyber risks.
Hassan strengthens the team with his extensive background as a Cyber Security Architect. With 18 years of experience across multi-technology data centre platforms and mobile core networks, he brings a wealth of knowledge in designing secure and resilient systems. As a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and Chartered Engineer (CEng), Hassan’s expertise in network and data security architectures ensures that our audits are thorough and effective. His proven ability to lead complex security initiatives equips our team to identify vulnerabilities and enhance organisational resilience against cyber threats.
Jerome is a seasoned Security Architect with extensive experience across multi-cloud environments (Azure, AWS, GCP, and DigitalOcean), web applications, and networks.
Beginning his career as an engineer, he has a deep technical understanding of system intricacies.
Jerome excels at building secure, customer-facing web applications that meet stringent data privacy requirements.
He advocates for the shift-left approach to security, embedding controls early in the development lifecycle to mitigate risks and reduce costs.
His pragmatic methodologies aligns with the agile needs of SMBs, ensuring robust and adaptable security measures.
Comparison: Attack Surface Assessment vs Red Teaming
If deciding between an Attack Surface Assessment and Red Teaming, it’s important to understand the pro’s and con’s of each.
Attack Surface Assessment
- Objective: Passively simulate the reconnaissance techniques used by threat actors to identify information which could be leveraged in a cyber attack.
- Scope: Focused on reconnaissance, without active testing. This conducts an assessment that will not impact on normal business services.
- Approach: Emulation of threat actor reconnaissance utilising the tactics, techniques and procedures utilised prior to commencement of a cyber attack.
- Outcome: Identification of: potential weaknesses in your public facing infrastructure, potential brand impersonation, shadow IT and leakage of confidential information on the clear and dark web.
- Who Is This Best For? Organisations with decentralised, cloud-based infrastructure, especially those who utilise social media to communicate with customers and maintain brand reputation.
Red Teaming
- Objective: Simulates real world attacks to test and validate both defences and the ability to respond to cyber attacks.
- Scope: Broad and stealth focused, targeting a mixture of people, technology and processes through a variety of attack vectors e.g. social engineering and technical exploitation.
- Approach: Emulation of adversaries using tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of threat actors.
- Outcome: Identified gaps in detection and response capabilities, with actionable insights into security improvements to operations.
- Who Is This Best For? Organisations with more mature security capabilities that seek to test both detection, response and mitigation strategies against advanced cyber threats.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the meaning of Attack Surface Assessment?
An attack surface assessment simulates threat actor reconnaissance techniques to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of your web facing infrastructure. This can include: network entry points, misconfigured cloud services, internet domains and social media accounts misusing your company brand, threats to key executives and leaked sensitive information.
- Why is an Attack Surface Assessment important?
Attack surface assessments empowers your organisation to identify and remediate issues, before they are exploited as part of a cyber attack.
- How often should an Attack Surface Assessment be conducted?
We recommend conducting attack surface assessments regularly (such as quarterly), and will work with you during the onboarding process to define an appropriate cadence for your organisation. However, even a single, one-off assessment can provide valuable insight into your organisation’s security.
- What techniques are used during Attack Surface Assessments?
In conducting an Attack Surface Assessment we use a variety of techniques and tools that may be used by attackers. This includes:
- Social media monitoring
- Open source intelligence gathering
- DNS enumeration
- Metadata analysis
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