Picus Breach and Attack Simulation

Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) is an automated security testing method that safely emulates and simulates real-world cyberattacks to assess an organization’s defenses. It continuously replicates adversarial tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), executing full attack kill chains to identify security gaps. BAS detects misconfigurations and inefficiencies in security controls, stress-testing them to evaluate their response to both known and emerging threats—without disrupting operations. It also provides vendor-specific and neutral mitigation strategies, including pre-tested prevention and detection signatures. This proactive approach strengthens security resilience and improves overall cyber defense strategies.

Yes, attack simulation is safe when performed using a reputable BAS tool. Unlike real cyberattacks, BAS solutions execute non-destructive simulations that do not compromise an organization’s systems or data. These tools operate in controlled environments, ensuring that attack scenarios do not disrupt business operations.

The level of safety depends on the tested environment and the BAS vendor’s approach. For example, some vendors conduct agentless simulations on WAF solutions, directly attacking the WAF. This increases the risk of denial-of-service conditions and can lead to unstable or inaccurate simulation results. In contrast, Picus BAS uses agent-based simulations on WAFs to ensure business continuity and provide more accurate assessments of WAF effectiveness.

BAS tools execute full attack kill chains safely within an organization’s IT environment, simulating adversaries across networks, endpoints, web applications, and email. They run diverse attack scenarios, including network infiltration, endpoint compromise, web exploitation, email attacks, data exfiltration, and URL filtering bypass. These scenarios use various attack vectors such as malware execution, ransomware downloads, atomic attacks (e.g., credential dumping, process injection, token theft), vulnerability exploitation, and APT simulations. By continuously testing security controls, BAS tools provide precise insights and mitigation strategies, helping organizations optimize defenses, improve detection and response, and proactively address vulnerabilities without disrupting operations.

Red teaming relies on human experts to simulate sophisticated adversaries, testing an organization’s ability to detect and respond to real-world attacks. While it provides valuable insights, red teaming is resource-intensive, costly, and offers only a point-in-time assessment, covering a limited scope within a short timeframe.

BAS, in contrast, delivers continuous, automated security validation. It systematically evaluates a broad range of security controls, ensuring defenses remain effective against evolving threats. BAS is more cost-effective and scalable, whereas red teaming requires specialized professionals and is conducted periodically. Ideally, both approaches should complement each other for comprehensive cybersecurity validation.

BAS and penetration testing (pentesting) both assess security defenses but differ in execution. BAS is automated and continuous, safely simulating real-world attacks to evaluate security effectiveness without impacting systems. Pentesting, on the other hand, is manual and periodic, performed by ethical hackers who actively identify and exploit system, network, and application vulnerabilities. Unlike BAS, pentesting is resource-intensive, puts significant stress on the network, and is not designed to be stealthy—its goal is to expose weaknesses through direct exploitation. While BAS provides ongoing validation, pentesting delivers deep, hands-on assessments. Both approaches complement each other for comprehensive security testing.

Traditional security assessments—such as red teaming, penetration testing, and vulnerability scanning—offer point-in-time evaluations that may quickly become outdated as threats evolve. These methods often require significant manual effort and only provide a snapshot of an organization’s security posture at a given moment.

BAS, in contrast, is automated and continuous, systematically testing security controls against the latest attack techniques. It provides ongoing validation, ensuring defenses remain effective against emerging threats. Unlike traditional assessments, BAS helps organizations detect gaps in real time and adapt their security posture proactively rather than reactively. Ideally, both approaches should be used together for comprehensive security assurance.

Vulnerability scanning detects and catalogs security weaknesses by comparing system configurations against known vulnerabilities, but it does not simulate real-world attacks or assess exploitability. It generates a static list of vulnerabilities with severity scores based on legacy metrics, often ignoring security controls already in place. For example, a scanner may flag a critical vulnerability without considering that a WAF or other defenses render it unexploitable, creating a false sense of urgency and adding unnecessary workload for security teams.

BAS, on the other hand, actively emulates adversary tactics, testing whether vulnerabilities can be exploited and whether security controls function as intended. Unlike vulnerability scanners, which lack business context, BAS provides actionable insights, real-time validation of security effectiveness, and continuous assessments. This approach gives organizations a more accurate understanding of real-world risks, ensuring security teams focus on threats that truly matter.

BAS tools evaluate security effectiveness by executing real-world attack scenarios and measuring how well security controls detect, prevent, and respond. Instead of theoretical assessments, BAS provides concrete prevention and detection scoring rates, highlighting where security solutions fail to react as intended. It identifies weaknesses across prevention, detection, and response layers, mapping results to frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK. Reports reveal attack success rates, prevention failures, and detection gaps, allowing teams to optimize configurations. Continuous testing helps security teams track progress, refine security controls, and apply vendor-specific mitigation strategies to strengthen defenses before actual threats exploit vulnerabilities.

Picus BAS enhances an organization’s security posture by continuously simulating real-world adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to validate and optimize defensive controls. It executes comprehensive attack simulations, spanning network infiltration, endpoint compromise, web application exploitation, email infiltration, data exfiltration, and URL filtering bypass attempts. By testing security solutions—including but not limited to NGFWs, WAFs, IPS/IDS, XDR, EDR, EPP, AV, email/web gateways, DLP, and SIEM—Picus identifies misconfigurations, detection gaps, and ineffective controls. Leveraging an up-to-date threat library and MITRE ATT&CK mapping, it provides vendor-specific mitigation recommendations, enabling security teams to proactively strengthen defenses and reduce risk exposure.

BAS solutions are valuable for organizations of all sizes—from large enterprises to mid-sized companies with limited cybersecurity teams. For instance, enterprises, financial institutions, healthcare providers, and government agencies employ BAS to continuously validate their security controls across complex, dynamically changing IT environments. These organizations are frequently targeted by APT campaigns, making BAS an essential tool for providing data-driven visibility into the readiness of their defenses against emerging attacks.

Mid-sized organizations, which often face resource constraints, benefit significantly from BAS by automating attack simulations, reducing manual testing efforts, and identifying security gaps. Additionally, BAS offers vendor-specific mitigation recommendations, thereby easing the burden of routine security validation.

Organizations that handle sensitive data also leverage BAS to proactively test their defenses, strengthen security controls, and ensure compliance with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS. 

Yes. BAS tools are expected to integrate with a wide range of security solutions by interfacing with network security tools like NGFW, WAF, EG, and SWG to assess perimeter defenses and traffic filtering. They also collaborate with threat detection and intrusion monitoring systems such as IDS and IPS to ensure accurate identification and response to malicious activities. Additionally, they evaluate endpoint security tools—including EDR, XDR, AV, and EPP—to detect and contain threats, while integrating with SecOps platforms like SIEM and SOAR to validate that alerts, logs, and automated responses function as expected. Finally, they support data protection efforts alongside DLP and EASM solutions, providing comprehensive validation across security domains.

Implementing and managing a robust BAS program requires a strategic, multi-layered approach. Start by selecting a tool that simulates a comprehensive range of attack vectors—mirroring real-world adversary tactics across network, endpoint, application, and data layers—and maintains an up-to-date threat library for both known and emerging risks. Continuous, automated simulations should validate your preventive and detective security controls while also allowing for customized threat scenarios tailored to your organization’s unique environment. Effective programs provide actionable, vendor-based mitigation recommendations and real-time, customizable reporting that maps results to frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK. Finally, ensure the solution is easy to use and deploy, integrating seamlessly with existing security operations.

Yes, the Picus Platform supports on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments.

Picus BAS (Security Control Validation - SCV) offers partial compatibility with cloud environments, depending on the deployment model. It effectively assesses security controls in Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) environments, where organizations utilize cloud-based infrastructure (e.g., virtual machines) from providers like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. SCV can simulate cloud-specific threats, such as misconfigured access controls, API exploitation, and data exfiltration, to evaluate security effectiveness.

For Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) deployments, organizations should use Cloud Security Validation (CSV) instead of SCV.

Picus BAS simulates real-world cyber threats across network, endpoint, web application, email, data loss prevention (DLP), and URL filtering security to validate defenses.

For network security, it tests APT traffic, ransomware downloads, malware loaders, RATs, trojans, and backdoors. In endpoint security, it executes ransomware, DLL side-loading, rootkits, and APT group campaigns across Windows, Linux, and macOS, evaluating EDR, XDR, IDS, and AV solutions.

For web security, it targets OWASP Top 10 threats like XSS, SQLi, SSRF, and webshells, while email security tests malicious links, malware attachments, and botnets. DLP assessments focus on PII, PCI, and source code leaks, while URL filtering tests block phishing and malicious sites.

Picus BAS also includes emerging threats testing, integrating CISA alerts, APT campaigns, and MITRE ATT&CK-based micro emulations.

BAS tool pricing can be customized to meet an organization’s unique requirements, allowing for solutions that are tailored based on the features chosen. For instance, companies concentrating on ransomware preparedness may opt for a package specifically designed to evaluate their defenses against such threats. Similarly, enterprises aiming to strengthen endpoint security might add prevention and mitigation modules, or even extend their capabilities with detection analytics for SIEM or EDR systems. This adaptable pricing model ensures that organizations invest only in the features most relevant to their security priorities and operational needs, resulting in a scalable and efficient solution.