Cyber Security

Proving the controls work, continuously

Independent, adversarial proof that the defences hold - and the continuous version of that proof, because a point-in-time report starts ageing the moment it is issued.

What we deliver

Services in this focus area

Every engagement is scoped to your environment - deploy a single capability or the full stack.

01
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management
On-PremCloudHybridBuildRun
Findings ranked by exploitability and reachability rather than raw severity, with a remediation SLA that is actually met.
- Authenticated scan coverage design across estate, cloud and containers
- Prioritisation model combining exploit intelligence, exposure and asset criticality
- Remediation SLA, exception governance and executive metrics
02
Infrastructure Penetration Testing
On-PremCloudHybridAdvise
An operator's view of the estate, with exploited paths rather than theoretical findings.
- External, internal and assumed-breach scenarios
- Chained attack paths with evidence and impact demonstration
- Prioritised remediation guidance and complimentary retest
03
Web, API & Mobile Application Testing
On-PremCloudHybridAdvise
Application testing that goes well past what a scanner will report.
- Methodology aligned to application security verification standards
- Business-logic, authorisation and object-level access abuse testing
- Developer walkthrough with reproduction steps and fix patterns
04
Cloud & Kubernetes Penetration Testing
CloudHybridAdvise
Test the control plane and the orchestrator, not just the workloads running on them.
- Identity, storage, network and metadata-service configuration review
- In-cloud privilege escalation, pivot and cross-account movement testing
- Cluster escape, RBAC abuse and admission-bypass testing
05
Red Team & Adversary Emulation
On-PremCloudHybridAdvise
A full-scope test of detection and response against a threat actor that plausibly targets you.
- Threat-intelligence-led scenario mapped to adversary techniques
- Objective-based operation under agreed stealth and safety constraints
- Detection gap analysis and joint debrief with the defensive team
06
Purple Team & Detection Validation
On-PremCloudHybridAdvise
Detections built while the technique is executing, with both teams watching the same telemetry.
- Technique-by-technique execution against an agreed matrix
- Live detection engineering for every observed gap
- Before-and-after coverage scorecard with owned backlog
07
Social Engineering & Phishing Simulation
On-PremCloudHybridAdviseRun
The human layer measured under realistic pressure, including voice, callback and synthetic-media lures.
- Targeted phishing, vishing, smishing and pretext campaigns
- Physical intrusion and tailgating testing where in scope
- Report-rate, time-to-report and repeat-susceptibility metrics
08
Continuous Threat Exposure Management
On-PremCloudHybridAdviseRun
A standing, prioritised view of what is exposed and genuinely exploitable this week.
- Scoping, discovery, prioritisation, validation and mobilisation cycle
- Reachability and exploitability validation to remove theoretical findings
- Mobilisation workflow into engineering with measured cycle time
09
External Attack Surface Management
CloudHybridRun
Find the internet-facing assets nobody remembers owning before someone else does.
- Continuous discovery of domains, addresses, certificates and shadow assets
- Takeover, exposure and credential-leak monitoring
- Ownership attribution and decommissioning workflow
10
Breach & Attack Simulation
On-PremCloudHybridBuildRun
Evidence that the controls you pay for block what their datasheets claim.
- Safe, continuous simulation across mail, endpoint, network and cloud controls
- Control efficacy scorecard by adversary technique
- Platform-specific tuning recommendations and re-test
11
Configuration & Hardening Compliance Audit
On-PremCloudHybridAdviseRun
Evidence-grade proof that baselines are deployed and still holding.
- Benchmark audit across operating systems, network, cloud and containers
- Deviation register with risk rating and owner
- Automated recurring audit pipeline with trend reporting
12
Manual Secure Code Review
On-PremCloudHybridAdvise
Human review of the code paths automated tooling consistently misses.
- Targeted review of authentication, authorisation, crypto and deserialisation paths
- Findings mapped to weakness classes with exploitability rationale
- Pattern-level remediation guidance and reusable secure primitives

Technical deep dive

Replacing the annual penetration test with a continuous exposure programme

Applies to any organisation deploying more often than it tests - which now includes almost every organisation with a pipeline.

What this is

A continuous exposure management loop: discover everything internet-facing and internal, model it as a graph of reachable attack paths, validate which paths are genuinely exploitable, mobilise the small number that matter into engineering, and verify the fix. Point-in-time testing survives inside the loop as depth on top of continuous breadth.

The problem being solved

The programme is one external and one internal penetration test a year, scoped months ahead against an asset list maintained by hand. Change freezes go in beforehand, outstanding patches are cleared the week before, and the report comes back with a handful of medium findings. Meanwhile the platform deploys forty times a week for the other fifty-one weeks, cloud accounts are created by teams with a corporate card, and the marketing estate has subdomains pointing at infrastructure that was decommissioned two quarters ago. The test is honest about a version of the estate that existed for one week and was tidied first.

Why it is hard

Scanners produce far more findings than any team can fix, and severity alone is a poor proxy for risk - an unreachable critical matters less than a reachable medium behind a wildcard DNS record.
Attack paths are properties of combinations, not assets. A read-only role, a public bucket and a stale token are individually unremarkable and jointly a compromise.
Discovery is the hard half. Shadow assets and forgotten records are found by adversaries precisely because nobody on the defending side has an inventory that includes them.

Reference architecture - step through it

SourceEnforcementDecisionDataObserveResultAdversary

all

One validated path, ranked against fourteen thousand findingstext

PATH  exp-2291        status: VALIDATED        rank: 3 of 41 open paths
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 entry   promo-eu.example.com                        [ external, discovered ]
         └─ CNAME → released object-storage bucket   ( dangling record, 74d )
             └─ bucket re-registrable by any tenant  → content control
                 └─ page served under a trusted origin
                     └─ session token readable by injected script
                         └─ token accepted by internal API gateway
                             └─ role: reporting-svc  ( over-broad )
                                 └─ read access: customer_export.*   ← IMPACT

 validation
   automated   control-simulation: egress filtering DID NOT block   ✗
   automated   WAF rule set: no rule matches trusted-origin injection ✗
   human       chained and reproduced in an isolated tenant          ✓
   intel       technique observed in the wild, commodity tooling     ✓

 ranking
   reachable_unauthenticated  ×1.0
   validated_exploitable      ×1.0
   exploit_in_the_wild        ×0.9
   asset_criticality (tier-1) ×1.0
   ─────────────────────────────────────  composite 0.90  → mobilise now

 mobilisation
   owner        platform-web  (from repo CODEOWNERS)
   root cause   DNS record not removed by the decommission pipeline
   fix          (1) remove record  (2) add teardown step to the module
                (3) narrow reporting-svc role to two prefixes
   sla          72h            verified 41h            recurrence  none

 for contrast: 14,208 raw scanner findings in the same window.
 41 became validated, reachable paths. 3 were exploitable to tier-1 impact.

Measured change

Measure	Before	After
Assets in scope	manual list, 1,140	continuously discovered, 3,802
Findings presented to engineering	14,208 raw	41 validated paths
Mean time to close a critical path	annual cycle	58 hours
Exposure visibility	1 week per year	continuous, with trend

Exposure became a line that moves rather than a document that ages. The annual test survived - it just stopped being the programme and became the deepest week inside it.

All Cyber Security focus areas Next focus areaSecurity Operations, Detection & Response

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About Gryffin Global

Proving the controls work, continuously

Services in this focus area

Risk-Based Vulnerability Management

Infrastructure Penetration Testing

Web, API & Mobile Application Testing

Cloud & Kubernetes Penetration Testing

Red Team & Adversary Emulation

Purple Team & Detection Validation

Social Engineering & Phishing Simulation

Continuous Threat Exposure Management

External Attack Surface Management

Breach & Attack Simulation

Configuration & Hardening Compliance Audit

Manual Secure Code Review

Replacing the annual penetration test with a continuous exposure programme

Talk to an offensive security & exposure management specialist.