Organizations can no longer rely on traditional security measures alone to protect themselves from sophisticated threats that leverage AI, social engineering, and zero-day vulnerabilities. In addition to investing in tools and protocols, organizations need to test their defenses. In this blog, we break down the four major approaches to cybersecurity testing and explain why security validation is the gold standard.
Different Types of Cybersecurity Testing
1. Security Validation
Security validation is a continuous, automated process that simulates real-world cyberattacks to test the effectiveness of your existing controls. Instead of waiting for a breach, it mimics attacker behavior across various aspects and delivers clear, actionable insights to help organizations strengthen their defenses proactively. Mastercard Cyber Front, powered by Picus, is one such platform designed for security validation.
2. Red Teaming
Red Teaming simulates targeted attacks by emulating the tactics of advanced threat actors. It's often used to test an organization's detection and response capabilities under realistic conditions. While valuable, it's typically narrow in scope, resource-intensive, and only conducted periodically.
3. Penetration Testing
Penetration testing is a structured exercise that identifies exploitable vulnerabilities in systems or applications. While it helps detect weaknesses before they are exploited, it's limited to specific targets and usually requires separate engagements to retest or expand coverage.
4. Vulnerability Assessment
This approach uses automated tools to scan systems for known vulnerabilities. It's fast and useful for initial detection, but often lacks depth, real-world attack context, and guidance on remediation priorities.
Why Security Validation Outperforms
Security Validation outperforms other methods across nearly every critical dimension.
- Efficiency and resource optimization: Security Validation is automated and scalable, reducing the manual lift required. It runs silently in the background, enabling security teams to focus on what matters.
- Continuous assessment for proactive defense: Threats evolve daily. Waiting weeks or months for your next pentest leaves gaps. Security Validation runs continuously, adapting to new threats in near real-time.
- Comprehensive security posture enhancement: Unlike siloed tests that only target specific assets, Security Validation assesses the entire cyber kill chain, giving you a holistic view of your organization's defense readiness.
- Streamlined mitigation planning: traditional tests often leave you with vague recommendations. Cyber Front security validation delivers ready-to-use, vendor-specific remediation steps to reduce risks faster.
- Holistic Threat Visibility: Security Validation exposes misconfiguration, gaps, and control failures across the full ecosystem, not just what's in the test scope.
- Agility in threat response: Security Validation responds to new vulnerabilities immediately instead of requiring a new engagement like for Red Teaming and Pen Testing.
- Safe and non-disruptive evaluation: Last but not least, Security Validation runs safely in production environments, without disrupting business operations.
Final Verdict
When benchmarked across seven critical dimensions, Security Validation emerges as the most effective and comprehensive approach to cybersecurity testing. To read the full research on Security Validation and to learn more about Mastercard Cyber Front, click the links below:
