RANT Roundtable in partnership with SpecterOps

'Gone In (Under) 30 Seconds: How To Run Your Attackers Off The Road'

The seasoned cybersecurity leader knows that threat actors no longer look for gaps in the organisation’s defences that they can slip through undetected, but instead try to compromise someone, or something, inside the organisation. Then, using stolen or commandeered credentials, they roam around the network, looking for a way to reach the crown jewels. You can monitor for intrusion, but if it comes disguised as a legitimate user taking actions that don’t appear anomalous, your chances of spotting it – never mind stopping it – are slim.

Rather than hardening the perimeter, then, today’s cybersecurity challenge is to disrupt, degrade and deny access to those internal pathways that attackers use once inside the network. But the speed with which compromised credentials can lead to business-threatening outcomes is making this exponentially more difficult – a challenge that’s only been intensified by the rapid uptake of so-called AI systems, which often spin up their own agentic identities without any permission or direct monitoring from human staff. On average, the time taken from initial compromise to first lateral movement by an attacker is now down to under 30 seconds.

The image of an “attack path” implies a leisurely wander through the network’s pleasant hinterlands; but today’s attackers are in high-performance sports cars, barreling down the corporate super-highway, tough to spot and harder to catch among the vast amounts of traffic that is constantly hurtling by at terrifying speeds.

Specter Ops have been disrupting attack paths since the company’s inception, and they know that whether the threat actor is driving a showroom-fresh Ferrari or a clapped-out old Ford, they’re not going to get very far if you dynamite the road they’ve chosen to joyride down. Join senior staff from the company, and a group of your fellow cybersecurity leadership peers, for an evening of convivial company, fine dining and a lively discussion about how to take the road out from under the attacker’s wheels.