Issue 7 2019

48 Acquisition International - Issue 7 2019 Innovative Crowdsourced Penetration Testing Penetration testing is supposed to help organizations find and fix vulnerabilities in their systems before criminal hackers can exploit them. Staying ahead of the game is crucial in cybersecurity, but unfortunately many organizations are falling behind, even when they follow best practices. A spokesperson for Synack tells us more about penetration testing and the firm’s latest launch. ost organizations conduct some sort of penetration testing, and they are most likely compliant with the standards that they are held to within their industries. Unfortunately, traditional penetration testing practices aren’t standing up against today’s modern cyber threats. According to IBM, only 38% of global organizations are equipped to handle a complex cyber attack. When traditional penetration testing can no longer empower companies to find and fix their vulnerabilities before criminal hackers exploit them, and when so much is at stake (ie: Yahoo’s 3 billion customer base), it’s time for security leaders to reconsider tradition and look to something more effective. The security industry is increasingly looking towards crowdsourced penetration testing to combat the security talent gap - more than 3.5 million cybersecurity positions are expected to be left unfilled by 2021 (Cybersecurity Ventures). Crowdsourcing ethical hackers from around the world gives organizations the ability to effectively and efficiently test multiple assets on their growing attack surface. Synack is the leading crowdsourced security platform that not only harnesses the power of crowdsourced human intelligence to beat cyber threats, but they are also augmenting humans with smart technology to help make them more effective, cover a wider attack surface, and speed up their time to find and fix vulnerabilities. This year, Synack launched the industry’s first cybersecurity platform to integrate crowdsourced human intelligence augmented with artificial intelligence to help security teams work smarter, not harder, to protect digital assets continuously and at scale. “While humans can’t scale, machines can’t think. We will always need the creativity of human intelligence. But to scale at the pace of the threats, we need to automate wherever possible and keep building technology to test ‘smarter’,” Dr. Mark Kuhr, Synack CTO and co- founder said. Synack’s industry-leading cybersecurity Platform 2.0 delivers a smarter, more efficient security test through the use of smart platform technology and new product, SmartScan. Together, the platform’s new features and advanced technology seamlessly orchestrate the optimal combination of human and machine intelligence for more effective, efficient security on a 24/7/365 basis. SmartScan helps security teams increase their attack surface coverage and gain new insight by continuously scanning for suspected vulnerabilities and engaging the company’s crowdsourced network of ethical hackers to validate them. The augmented intelligence offered by Synack’s M Jun19233 “smart” Crowdsourced Security Platform, if applied to all penetration testing, would add 4x more efficiency to security teams. Additional benefits of Synack’s Crowdsourced Security Platform to security teams include: • Noise Reduction: 99.98% of total noise is reduced by leveraging Synack SmartScan in combination with Synack Red Team crowdsourced vulnerability triage and patch verification services. • Higher Value: The latest version of Synack’s platform with augmented intelligence increases the ROI of Synack’s original offering by over 50%. Customers will see a 159% ROI with the Synack Crowdsourced Security Platform in comparison to a traditional penetration test. And if comparing the Synack platform to a traditional scanner, they will get a 262% ROI. If deployed universally across application security testing, SmartScan would add ~$3B in security value back to the market. Not only has Synack launched SmartScan, but the company has introduced additional new and enhanced features as part of its innovative platform. Apollo, the “brain” or engine behind Synack’s testing orchestration, utilizes machine learning and automation to