RANT Roundtable in partnership with SpecterOps

We’re all familiar with the archetype of the poacher who becomes a gamekeeper. And the relatively brief history of cybersecurity is littered with examples of network defenders who got started trying to break into systems. It’s not a prerequisite for a successful SOC member to have spent time as a Black Hat – but there are definite advantages to businesses in having defenders who are able to think like attackers.

Traditionally, enterprises facing different attack vectors and threat scenarios erect a series of defensive technologies, each of which solves a discrete problem set. In theory this works well enough. But an attacker isn’t thinking about going through your identity governance tools or blasting a hole in your access-management capabilities: they’re finding ways to sneak around them.

A solid defensive posture should therefore include understanding the same opportunities an adversary is going to want to exploit. To do that, our friends from SpecterOps argue, you need to be able to see the paths the attacker is likely to take as they seek to gain access to your systems and move across them to get their hands on your digital crown jewels. Their BloodHound platform – a kind of Google Maps for the network – builds a graphical model of all the routes an attacker can take to go from the perimeter to the centre. Once you can map these pathways, you can start to adjust the paths on your map more adeptly, removing paths that allow adversaries to advance and thus, greatly reducing Identity risk.

Join a select gathering of your fellow cybersecurity leadership peers, and staff from SpecterOps, to discuss how you can start better managing the attack paths in your organisation. We’re not sure yet whether the menu involves eggs, but we promise they won’t be poached.