New Ways to Use XM Cyber for Remote Home Workers, Red Teamers and Pen Testers

One of the best things about releasing a new product into the wild is discovering all the new, creative and unanticipated ways in which people begin using the product. Sometimes users come up with novel applications that surprise even the most far-sighted product builders and designers. In other cases, they begin extending the value proposition of the product into a new direction.
At XM Cyber, we’ve noticed two compelling examples of this phenomenon in action: Clients are using our tools to work remotely in a way that enhances IT safety, and they are also using our platform to test the strength of their security environments from a distance.

Let’s take a closer look.

XM Cyber: Protecting Remote Workers from Cyber Threats

Cloud computing, broadband, collaboration apps and other tools have helped workers seamlessly transition between home and work offices. While telecommuting has been growing for years, the COVID-19 pandemic has, almost instantaneously, turned remote work from the exception to the norm in many parts of the world.

While it’s great for workers and enterprises to have a safer option for conducting business, this sudden shift to remote work en masse creates extraordinary challenges for IT managers and security personnel. With workers outside the confines of the office and its traditional security safeguards, shadow IT issues loom large, along with the possibility of remote desktop hacking and other malicious activities. The simple act of sharing a file can jeopardize an organization’s critical assets, if done without the right protections. With a much larger proportion of the workforce at home, the size of the attack surface grows in parallel.

Fortunately, XM Cyber’s breach and attack simulation (BAS) platform is being used to help address issues related to remote workers and cybersecurity risk. To maintain business continuity in the wake of COVID-19, organizations needed to get their workers set up at home as quickly as possible. Cybersecurity for remote workers may have taken a backseat during this period, as many organizations rushed to accommodate legions of new telecommuters, spinning up thousands of new VPNs and remote user accounts with minimal testing. It’s a scenario almost certain to create significant new vulnerabilities.

These same organizations are using XM Cyber’s BAS Platform to identify hidden attack vectors across this vastly expanded attack surface. Our platform helps them immediately visualize this new world, highlighting what to remediate and allowing defenders to close gaps very quickly.

Using XM Cyber to Help with Remote Penetration Testing/Red Team Testing

With so many millions of people now working from home, security testing teams have a problem: How to conduct business as usual with no physical site access? Organizations also must consider how to protect critical infrastructure if conventional red team testing becomes impossible and visibility into the state of organizational defense becomes poor.

Once again, XM Cyber has the answer. Our BAS platform offers the power of red team automation executed remotely. By launching simulated attacks in a continuous and automated fashion in a controlled environment, our platform allows organizations to identify vulnerabilities and instantly remediate. It’s like having a purple team working at your disposal, 24 hours each day, 365 days each year, with no need for local staff or third-party resources.

In Conclusion

Necessity is often the mother of invention — and our clients are discovering new ways to extend the value proposition of XM Cyber’s BAS platform to an even greater degree. If you’d like to speak to us about using our platform, please don’t hesitate to reach out to XM Cyber today.

Richard Dickinson is UK Sales Director, XM Cyber