Automated Testing | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

IT leaders know the drill—regulators and cyber insurers demand regular network penetration testing to keep the bad guys out. But here's the thing: hackers don't wait around for compliance schedules. Most companies approach network penetration testing on a set schedule, with the most common frequency being twice a year (29%), followed by three to four times per year (23%) and once per year (20%), according to the Kaseya Cybersecurity Survey Report 2024 . Compliance-focused testing can catch vulnerabilities that exist at the exact time of testing, but it's not enough to stay ahead of attackers in a meaningful way. Why More Frequent Testing Makes Sense When companies test more often, they're not just checking a box for compliance—they're actually protecting their networks. The Kaseya survey also points out that the top drivers for network penetration testing are: Cybersecurity Control and Validation (34%) – ensuring the security controls work and vulnerabilities are minimized. Re

Cyber threats are intensifying, and cybersecurity has become critical to business operations. As security budgets grow, CEOs and boardrooms are demanding concrete evidence that cybersecurity initiatives deliver value beyond regulation compliance. Just like you wouldn't buy a car without knowing it was first put through a crash test, security systems must also be validated to confirm their value. There is an increasing shift towards security validation as it allows cyber practitioners to safely use real exploits in production environments to accurately assess the efficiency of their security systems and identify critical areas of exposure, at scale. We met with Shawn Baird, Associate Director of Offensive Security & Red Teaming at DTCC, to discuss how to effectively communicate the business value of his Security Validation practices and tools to his upper management. Here is a drill down into how Shawn made room for security validation platforms within his already tight budget an

As a relatively new security category, many security operators and executives I've met have asked us "What are these Automated Security Validation (ASV) tools?" We've covered that pretty extensively in the past, so today, instead of covering the " What is ASV?" I wanted to address the " Why ASV?" question. In this article, we'll cover some common use cases and misconceptions of how people misuse and misunderstand ASV tools daily (because that's a lot more fun). To kick things off, there's no place to start like the beginning. Automated security validation tools are designed to provide continuous, real-time assessment of an organization's cybersecurity defenses. These tools are continuous and use exploitation to validate defenses like EDR, NDR, and WAFs. They're more in-depth than vulnerability scanners because they use tactics and techniques that you'll see in manual penetration tests. Vulnerability scanners won't relay hashes or combine vulnerabilities to further attacks, whic

Cybersecurity researchers are sounding the alarm over an ongoing campaign that's leveraging internet-exposed Selenium Grid services for illicit cryptocurrency mining. Cloud security firm Wiz is tracking the activity under the name SeleniumGreed . The campaign, which is targeting older versions of Selenium (3.141.59 and prior), is believed to be underway since at least April 2023 . "Unbeknownst to most users, Selenium WebDriver API enables full interaction with the machine itself, including reading and downloading files, and running remote commands," Wiz researchers Avigayil Mechtinger, Gili Tikochinski, and Dor Laska said . "By default, authentication is not enabled for this service. This means that many publicly accessible instances are misconfigured and can be accessed by anyone and abused for malicious purposes." Selenium Grid, part of the Selenium automated testing framework, enables parallel execution of tests across multiple workloads, different bro