Beyond PTaaS: Integrating PTaaS & AEV into Your CTEM Program for Continuous Security Assurance

Modern-day digital infrastructure affords enterprises innumerable opportunities for innovation, growth, and financial success. On the other hand, the same infrastructure serves as an attractive hunting ground for all kinds of threat actors, making a robust, cyber-resilient security posture–and especially continuous cybersecurity assurance vital. This is where Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) has come into play.

CTEM, a term first introduced by Gartner, is a proactive, five-stage security approach to reducing enterprise cyber risk, preventing breaches, and safeguarding enterprise assets. These stages include: scoping, discovery, prioritization, validation, and mobilization.

At its core, CTEM provides a structured framework to achieve continuous visibility and response to evolving threats by continuously monitoring the digital landscape to identify, assess, and mitigate security vulnerabilities, and build cyber-resilience.

When designed properly, a CTEM program can enable security leaders and practitioners to effectively manage their organizations’ attack surfaces to stay ahead of even sophisticated threats and threat actors, largely thanks to its emphasis on continuity. Gartner even predicts that “By 2026, organizations that prioritize their security investments based on a CTEM program will be 3x less likely to suffer a breach.”¹

The strongest CTEM programs combine two essential elements: Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) and Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV). These two different, yet complementary cybersecurity validation methods can work together to improve the depth and breadth of security testing, providing continuous assurance and protection from both known and emerging threats.

This blog will explore why integrating PTaaS and AEV with CTEM can help organizations safeguard their environments in a complex, volatile, and expanding threat landscape.

What is Penetration Testing as a Service?

PTaaS combines the power and benefits of automated workflows and vulnerability scanning with expert-led penetration testing to deliver scalable, repeatable, and efficient assessments. This relatively new, data-centric approach integrates advanced technology, automation, and expert human insights to facilitate continuous, on-demand testing through a data-driven, unified platform.

With PTaaS, organizations can test their entire digital environment on-demand, and in doing so, proactively identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities, address risks, and prevent security breaches. Organizations also lean on PTaaS to not only validate their security posture, but strengthen it to satisfy regulatory mandates. Leveraging PTaaS vs. traditional pentesting enables security teams to achieve these objectives without the long lead times and scheduling delays typically experienced with traditional, consulting-style penetration testing.

All in all, PTaaS provides expert-driven testing supported and accelerated by automated workflows, scanning, and reporting, making it an indispensable and high-value investment for CTEM.

What is Adversarial Exposure Validation?

AEV is a security methodology that uses automation and threat intelligence–and in some cases, AI–to simulate real-world adversarial techniques and execute real-world attacks. These simulations help security teams uncover and prioritize real exposures and exploitable vulnerabilities affecting your business.

AEV provides empirical, data-driven insights into organizations’ defensive posture, also suggesting remediation actions based on specific scenarios and the likely impact of each possible attack. While AEV is in a much earlier adoption phase than PTaaS, enterprises are increasingly relying on AEV to:

Continuously identify and assess attack path feasibility at scale
• Test, validate, and refine security defenses
• Dynamically adapt existing controls
• Eliminate the root causes of exposures at scale

Overall, AEV is a sophisticated, highly automated method for continuous security testing and validation, making it a valuable addition to CTEM programs at various levels of maturity.

Benefits of Integrating PTaaS and AEV into Your CTEM Program

By combining AEV with PTaaS, organizations garner all the benefits of continuous testing and continuous assurance – without the overhead of building and managing these capabilities in-house.

PTaaS maximizes the speed, flexibility, scalability, depth, and ROI of penetration testing for enterprises by offering expert-led pentesting through a SaaS-based model and leveraging automation. With PTaaS, organizations get actionable results without the overhead of internal tools or dedicated personnel, however, one of its caveats is that it’s typically periodic rather than continuous.

AEV fills that gap, where it exists, providing continuous, automated validation using real-world attack scenarios. It tells organizations not just if an attacker could breach their environment, but how they would gain a foothold, and what their lateral movements would likely be once inside by mapping attack paths and each path’s likelihood of exploitation and potential impact. It offers real-time evidence of exposures and supports the continuous assurance that modern enterprises need.

Combining PTaaS with AEV can help organizations optimize their CTEM programs, including efficacy, cost, and operational efficiency. Together, they form a comprehensive, modern foundation for proactive threat exposure management.

Strengthen your CTEM Program with BreachLock PTaaS and AEV

Today, a comprehensive, well-planned CTEM program is vital to safeguarding organizations’ business-critical assets from the most critical existing and emerging threats. Integrating Penetration Testing as a Service and Adversarial Exposure Validation is an excellent way to facilitate an effective CTEM program. These complementary solutions join forces to create a powerful and comprehensive CTEM infrastructure that provides continuous assurance, maximizes risk mitigation, reinforces threat protection, and improves your security stance.

Interested in learning how BreachLock PTaaS and AEV can help you strengthen your CTEM program, prepare for emerging threats, and improve your overall security posture? Contact BreachLock today!

About BreachLock

BreachLock is a global leader in offensive security, delivering scalable and continuous security testing. Trusted by global enterprises, BreachLock provides human-led and AI-powered attack surface management, penetration testing, red teaming, and adversarial exposure validation (AEV) services that help security teams stay ahead of adversaries. With a mission to make proactive security the new standard, BreachLock is shaping the future of cybersecurity through automation, data-driven intelligence, and expert-driven execution.

Know Your Risk. Contact BreachLock today!

References:

1.
Gartner. “How to Manage Cybersecurity Threats, Not Episodes.” Gartner, 19 October 2022. https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/how-to-manage-cybersecurity-threats-not-episodes

Author

BreachLock Labs