The modern attack surface is expanding at an extraordinary pace. Vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and advanced threats challenge even the most robust security teams. Traditional security assessments—like penetration tests or red team exercises—are conducted periodically, leaving critical blind spots in between. Standalone breach and attack simulation (BAS) tools provide insights but lack the direct functionality to act on findings, making it harder for teams to respond effectively.
Security teams need a solution that not only highlights detection gaps but enables them to take immediate action to reduce exposure and eliminate risks.
Today, we’re excited to introduce Detection Validation, a new capability within GreyMatter that executes automated, continuous breach and attack simulations to validate your detection rules and security controls.
Detection Validation eliminates tool pivots and inefficiencies from standalone solutions, enabling teams to take immediate action on detection gaps directly within GreyMatter. With this capability, security teams can be confident in their detection rule fidelity and coverage—strengthening their overall security posture.
Detection Validation for Proactive Defense
Detection Validation empowers organizations to proactively validate their detections and security controls through native integration within GreyMatter. By integrating continuous breach and attack simulations directly within GreyMatter, this capability transforms detection validation from a reactive, periodic task into a seamless, automated process. Key benefits include:
- Stay Ahead with Continuous, Automated Simulations: Schedule recurring breach and attack simulations to validate your security controls against evolving threats—ensuring your defenses are always prepared.
- Achieve Laser-Focused Detection Accuracy: Confirm that your detection rules are precisely calibrated to real-world threats, eliminating noise and blind spots across your attack surface.
- Act Immediately Without Disrupting Workflow: Identify and address gaps directly within GreyMatter, removing inefficiencies caused by switching between tools.
- Prevent Gaps from Becoming Breaches: Proactively strengthen defenses, allowing your team to detect, investigate, and respond to threats before they escalate.
With Detection Validation, security teams can operate with confidence, knowing their defenses are continuously tested and optimized for real-world scenarios.
Key Components of GreyMatter Detection Validation
Detection Validation provides advanced technical capabilities to empower security teams with precision, automation, and actionable insights.
Detection Validation User Interface
Easily create and manage validation scenarios and get simulation results at your fingertips—staying informed of your coverage. On the Detection Validation homepage, GreyMatter provides key metrics, including the number of simulations executed in the last 24 hours and the total number of simulations available. The page will also display previously run scenarios with details like the host they were run on, how they were executed, and whether they ran into any errors.
Advanced Library of Real-World Threat Simulations
GreyMatter Detect comes loaded with a robust library of attack scenarios built on industry-leading frameworks and ReliaQuest’s proprietary threat insights.
These scenarios are collections of simulations designed to test specific tactics, techniques, or procedures (TTPs). They are categorized based on the MITRE ATT&CK framework or specific GreyMatter Detect rules and can be run on endpoints like Windows, Mac, and Linux. By leveraging these scenarios, you can test your organization’s security posture against real-world attack methods.
Detection Rule Validation
You can also validate specific detection rules using simulated scenarios aligned to GreyMatter Detect’s extensive rule library. This ensures your detection rules are functioning as intended, providing precise and reliable coverage without generating noise.
Continuous, Automated Breach and Attack Simulation
In addition to running one-off scenarios, you can schedule recurring scenarios, making sure you cover any blind spots between manual runs.
Scenario Results
Once your scenario is complete, GreyMatter provides all the details you need to take the next step:
- Scenario Details: Scenario description and the selected host where the simulation was executed.
- Triggered Alerts:
- Expected: Alerts that generated as part of an Associated Detect Rule.
- Additional: Alerts that generated from non-associated detection rules. These can occur due to overlapping coverage, vendor-specific rules, or custom ad-hoc rules that detected the activity.
- Simulation Results: Detailed results for each simulation, including the status of the tests executed.
- Associated Detect Rules: Detection rules expected to trigger based on the scenario and the included simulations.
- Simulations: A list of the simulations that ran in the scenario.
What to Know About the Release
Detection Validation is available now within GreyMatter, with ongoing simulation additions and feature enhancements planned throughout the year. These updates will expand your ability to proactively validate detection rules and verify the efficacy of security controls.
To execute breach and attack simulations, you’ll need to install the GreyMatter Agent on a host machine.
How to Install the GreyMatter Agent
Before utilizing Detection Validation, ensure the GreyMatter Agent is installed on a host machine. A setup guide is available directly within the GreyMatter UI. For a more personalized walkthrough, connect with your customer success manager.
If you previously installed the legacy Verify agent, you’ll need to uninstall it and reinstall the GreyMatter Agent. Detailed instructions for this process are available in the support documentation.
What to Do Next
For more details about this release and upcoming product enhancements, ReliaQuest customers can reach out to their dedicated customer success manager.
