Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) is a cybersecurity technology that automatically tests an organization’s security posture by emulating real-world attack techniques and tactics. These platforms simulate the actions of attackers, including everything from initial infiltration to lateral movement and data exfiltration. The primary goal is to identify security weaknesses before adversaries can exploit them, all without causing harm or disruption to the organization’s assets or operations.
Unlike manual or periodic testing, breach and attack simulation operates continuously or on a scheduled basis, providing up-to-date insights into how existing security controls respond to simulated attacks. BAS solutions leverage up-to-date threat intelligence, enabling organizations to measure their risk exposure to the latest attack patterns. The result is a more accurate and dynamic assessment of security readiness compared to traditional, episodic security assessments.
This is part of a series of articles about exposure management.
Breach and attack simulation provides practical, continuous insight into the effectiveness of security controls, helping organizations identify and close gaps before they can be exploited. By emulating real attack behaviors in a safe environment, it supports a more proactive and measurable approach to defense.
Key benefits include:
Here are the key components of a breach and attack simulation platform.
BAS tools simulate a broad range of attack techniques, mimicking both common and advanced adversaries. The platform typically uses scripted “playbooks” that replicate reconnaissance, exploitation, lateral movement, privilege escalation, and data exfiltration. Attack simulation tools are run against the organization’s environment, targeting systems, endpoints, networks, and cloud services. The intent is to pierce defenses as a real attacker might, testing if actual controls can detect or thwart these activities.
Simulations can be tailored to mirror specific threat actors relevant to an organization’s industry or geography. This targeted approach increases the relevance of findings and ensures that security teams are prepared for attacks that are most likely to occur. Using up-to-date threat intelligence, breach and attack simulation adapts its simulated attack scenarios to current tactics and emerging vulnerabilities, ensuring that assessments reflect the latest threat landscape.
Traditional security assessments, such as penetration testing and vulnerability scanning, are typically one-off or periodic endeavors. In contrast, breach and attack simulation platforms are built for continuous testing, allowing organizations to evaluate their security controls at any time. By running tests regularly or even continuously, breach and attack simulation can quickly reveal newly introduced weaknesses and measure the effectiveness of recent security improvements.
Continuous testing also means that organizations can promptly detect regressions as changes are made to infrastructure, software, or security tools.
One of BAS’s core capabilities is the identification of vulnerabilities that may not be detected by traditional vulnerability scans. By simulating the actions of threat actors, breach and attack simulation platforms can uncover weak points in network segmentation, access controls, endpoint configurations, and security monitoring that automated scanners might miss. breach and attack simulation doesn’t just highlight the technical vulnerability but shows how it can be exploited in the context of real attack paths.
The platform correlates the results of simulated attacks to specific controls and assets, making it easier for security teams to prioritize fixes based on actual risk rather than theoretical vulnerabilities alone.
Breach and attack simulation validates the effectiveness of security controls such as firewalls, email gateways, endpoint protection, and intrusion detection systems.
By continuously testing these defenses with real-world tactics, organizations can ensure that technologies are working as intended—not just passively configured. Control validation through breach and attack simulation often exposes gaps in alerting, weaknesses in policy enforcement, or misconfigurations that would otherwise remain hidden. Meanwhile, automated reporting highlights which controls stopped which simulated attacks, making it easier to measure return on investment and pinpoint where improvements are needed.
Let’s review the differences between breach and attack simulation and other approaches to security testing.
BAS differs from vulnerability scanning in scope and methodology. Vulnerability scanners check systems for known weaknesses, primarily focusing on missing patches or misconfigurations. They do not validate how these vulnerabilities could be actively exploited or how effective a security stack is at detecting and thwarting attacks. Results from scanners can be overwhelming, and many findings may not be exploitable in a real-world scenario.
Unlike vulnerability scanners, breach and attack simulation operates by simulating complete attack chains and tactics to determine which vulnerabilities are most likely to be exploited in the context of the organization’s environment. This leads to more context-driven, actionable insights and risk prioritization, helping security teams focus on weaknesses an attacker would realistically leverage.
Penetration testing is a manual, point-in-time exercise in which skilled testers attempt to breach defenses in a controlled environment. While effective at revealing specific exposures and control weaknesses, penetration testing is limited by cost, scope, and frequency. It generally provides a snapshot and may not keep pace with changes in IT environments or attacker tactics.
Breach and attack simulation, on the other hand, offers continuous, automated assessments that can be scheduled to run at any interval. While it may not uncover the same creative, novel attacks a human pen tester might identify, breach and attack simulation provides constant coverage and immediate validation of controls after every change, update, or deployment.
Red teaming involves adversarial simulations by skilled professionals who attempt to breach systems using covert, advanced attacker tactics. This approach is thorough, but labor-intensive and often infrequent due to the required expertise and planning. Red team exercises usually target business processes, people, and technology, offering a holistic evaluation of defense-in-depth.
Breach and attack simulation, while not a substitute for red teaming, provides automated, scalable simulation capabilities that offer broad coverage more frequently. It can complement red team efforts by identifying day-to-day technical control gaps and measuring ongoing security effectiveness between comprehensive red team engagements.
Purple teaming integrates red (offensive) and blue (defensive) teams to collaboratively detect, respond to, and remediate simulated attacks. It maximizes organizational learning but requires significant coordination and resources. The process is only as continuous as the engagements are scheduled.
Breach and attack simulation can act as a “virtual purple team” by regularly running simulated attacks and instantly reporting defensive efficacy. This helps automate aspects of what purple teaming achieves, offering organizations with limited security staff the benefits of active control testing and feedback without needing to coordinate complex human-driven exercises.
Related content: Read our guide to vulnerability assessment
BAS platforms offer immediate feedback on whether security controls, such as intrusion prevention systems, web gateways, or endpoint protection tools, are configured and capable of blocking real attacks. By running attack simulation tools, organizations can move beyond assumptions or vendor promises, receiving clear proof of which defenses are effective and which require adjustment or replacement.
Continuous validation also ensures that updates or infrastructure changes do not silently degrade protection. Regular BAS testing brings assurance that controls remain effective as threats and systems evolve, supporting efforts to meet internal security benchmarks and compliance requirements.
BAS provides an objective test of an organization’s incident response capabilities by generating real alerts, logs, or security incidents through simulated attacks. This allows security operations teams to practice detection, escalation, investigation, and mitigation in real time, identifying gaps in monitoring, alerting, and automated workflows.
Lessons learned from simulated incidents can be fed back into training, playbook development, and process improvement. As threats grow in sophistication, validating and refining the incident response process using BAS helps organizations reduce the time to containment and improve outcomes during actual breaches.
BAS can simulate attacks that exploit human factors, such as phishing or social engineering, enabling targeted security awareness training. By assessing how employees respond to simulated attacks, organizations can measure effectiveness and identify users or departments in need of additional education or controls.
The iterative feedback provided by BAS-driven simulations ensures that employee security training adapts as threats evolve. Security teams can tailor training based on real-world employee behavior and performance during controlled exercises, reinforcing policies and building a stronger security culture over time.
Organizations frequently struggle to track whether patches are effective, deployed correctly, or create new issues elsewhere. BAS platforms can target recently patched systems with exploits relevant to those vulnerabilities, ensuring that patching efforts have closed the intended security gaps.
Automated validation also helps catch failures in patch deployment processes or configuration drift that leaves systems exposed. By quantifying how patching impacts attack simulation outcomes, BAS aligns vulnerability management efforts with measured improvements in the organization’s security posture.
Dima Potekhin, CTO and Co-Founder of CyCognito, is an expert in mass-scale data analysis and security. He is an autodidact who has been coding since the age of nine and holds four patents that include processes for large content delivery networks (CDNs) and internet-scale infrastructure.
In my experience, here are tips that can help you better implement and get maximum value from Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS):
BAS platforms sometimes generate false positives—simulated threats that trigger alerts without representing a genuine risk. Excessive noise can overwhelm security teams, obscuring real issues and leading to alert fatigue. Addressing this requires tuning the simulation’s scope, correlating results with logs and alerts, and integrating BAS findings with a broader detection and response strategy.
Fine-tuning simulations and working closely with tool vendors helps reduce noise, but organizations should be prepared to iterate on their deployment strategy. Adjustment of attack playbooks, alignment with asset criticality, and validation of alert logic can help refine BAS outputs for practical action.
Implementing BAS typically demands a moderate to high allocation of resources, including skilled cybersecurity personnel to deploy, monitor, and interpret findings. Setting up the platform, configuring attack scenarios, and ensuring integration with other security tools all take time and attention.
Smaller organizations may struggle with the resource burden, particularly if security staff are already stretched. Administrators must ensure that simulated attacks do not interfere with legitimate business activities. Automating response to findings, prioritizing high-risk scenarios, and leveraging managed BAS offerings can help mitigate resource strain.
The threat landscape changes constantly, requiring BAS platforms to update attack playbooks and simulation libraries frequently. Stale or outdated simulations can lead to a false sense of security by missing novel tactics or exploits used in current attack campaigns.
To address this challenge, organizations should invest in solutions that provide consistent, timely updates based on emerging threat intelligence. Regularly reviewing and updating BAS scenarios in line with shifting attack trends and organizational changes (such as new cloud services or applications) is essential to keep tests relevant.
BAS should be strategically aligned with the systems, applications, and data that matter most to the business. For example, an e-commerce company may prioritize simulations targeting its payment processing platform, while a healthcare provider might focus on electronic health record systems. Running BAS against less critical assets first can create noise and waste resources without addressing the highest-impact risks.
To implement this, organizations should begin with a business impact analysis to identify the systems whose compromise would cause the greatest financial, regulatory, or reputational damage. BAS scenarios can then be customized to test specific risks, such as ransomware targeting customer data or lateral movement toward a crown-jewel application. Prioritizing simulations in this way ensures that findings are directly relevant and remediation efforts strengthen the organization’s most valuable assets.
Unlike penetration tests, which may occur once or twice a year, BAS should be designed to provide near-continuous assurance. Attack surfaces are constantly changing due to new deployments, software updates, configuration changes, or emerging threats. Without frequent testing, gaps can remain unnoticed for months.
Organizations should schedule BAS runs based on the pace of change in their environment. For example, weekly or daily simulations may be appropriate for cloud-native organizations with frequent deployments, while a monthly cadence may suit more static infrastructures. Continuous background testing can be used for critical systems to ensure that regressions or misconfigurations are caught immediately. In addition, running targeted BAS after patch cycles, firewall rule changes, or software upgrades helps validate whether those changes improved or weakened security.
BAS findings are most valuable when they can be understood in the context of widely recognized security models. By mapping simulated attack steps to frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, organizations can see how adversary tactics play out in their environment and measure coverage across the entire kill chain. For instance, if BAS simulations consistently succeed in lateral movement tactics without being detected, the results can be tied directly to MITRE’s "Lateral Movement" category, highlighting a specific defensive gap.
Aligning results to frameworks also improves communication. Technical teams can see exactly which attack techniques succeeded, while executives and auditors can understand findings in terms of compliance obligations or security standards. This standardized mapping helps prioritize remediation, avoids siloed technical reporting, and provides a benchmark to measure improvement over time.
BAS is not only a tool for testing defenses but also for validating the effectiveness of people and processes. Simulated attacks generate real alerts, which can be used to test whether detection, escalation, and response workflows function as expected. For example, if a phishing simulation triggers an alert in the SIEM but takes several hours to be triaged by the SOC, that delay highlights a weakness in operational response rather than technology alone.
By integrating BAS into incident response playbooks, security teams can regularly rehearse their procedures under realistic conditions. Lessons learned from simulations can feed directly into process improvements, such as updating escalation criteria, adjusting automated response actions, or refining communication between security and IT teams. Over time, this creates a cycle of continuous improvement where BAS is not just validating controls but actively strengthening response readiness.
Because BAS involves simulating real attack behavior, it must be carefully controlled to avoid unintended disruptions. A poorly scoped simulation could cause denial-of-service conditions, trigger excessive false alarms, or create unnecessary load on systems. To prevent this, organizations should define clear guardrails around BAS testing, excluding mission-critical systems or sensitive production databases from certain types of simulations.
Many BAS platforms provide built-in safeguards, such as running only non-destructive payloads or limiting execution to “safe mode” tactics that stop short of causing damage. Organizations should validate these safety measures during initial deployment in a test environment before rolling out simulations to production systems. Additionally, involving system owners and IT operations teams in planning ensures that everyone understands the scope and impact of BAS activities. A mature BAS program balances realism with safety, providing valuable insights without risking business continuity.
Traditional BAS platforms focus on testing how well internal controls detect and respond to simulated attacks, but they often assume an accurate understanding of the attack surface.
CyCognito
By combining external exposure management with BAS, organizations can ensure that simulated attack paths reflect actual adversary opportunities rather than a limited internal view. This creates a more accurate foundation for CTEM programs (with full support for ASM) and helps security teams design and prioritize BAS scenarios based on the risks that matter most.
With CyCognito, organizations can:
CyCognito ensures that BAS programs test the environment attackers can actually see, creating a more accurate and actionable view of external defense readiness.