Everything You Need, Nothing You Don't

The Virtual Red Team + Ridgeline = The Highground Cyber Advantage

The Virtual Red Team & Cyber Talent Gap

Industry research has found that 73% of small and midmarket businesses have very limited and/or no access to information security professionals (e.g., experienced chief information security officers or reputable security analysts), a phenomenon that Highground Cyber refers to as the ‘Cyber Talent Gap’. This Cyber Talent Gap has resulted in an increasingly vulnerable SMB ecosystem. And because most threat actors are opportunistic by nature, over half of all cyber-attacks target small and midmarket businesses. In fact, in the year 2018 alone, there was a 424% increase in the confirmed number of breaches within the SMB ecosystem.

Most small and midmarket business executives recognize action needs to be taken and 77% of them have concluded outsourcing their security to a specialized firm is the best response strategy.

Highground Cyber’s Virtual Red Team or VRT model was designed from the ground up to address the Cyber Talent Gap, fractionalizing the services of an experienced and certified Red Team. Furthermore, the VRT can be tailored to the unique needs of each organization and the requirements of its Cybersecurity & Privacy Program, ensuring that you have everything you need and nothing you don’t from the standpoint of cyber talent.

The bottom line is that for less than the cost of one full-time employee, you gain access to a broad range of experienced and certified information security professionals who know what to do, when to do it, and, most importantly, why they are doing it.

Ridgeline & the Security Solutions Issue

IDC research has found that investment in information security technologies has risen across every industry, amounting to nearly 83.5 billion dollars. However, the number of reported breaches has steadily risen over the past year despite this increased investment. Furthermore, the acquisition of these technologies is actually contributing to the problem. Cisco research has found that organizations have an average of 20 security solutions in their technology stack, many of which are non-interoperable or misconfigured.

The non-interoperability or misconfiguration of technology causes two problems. The first is a systems integration nightmare, wherein security solutions can neither send nor receive meaningful information without re-architecting your organization’s information technology infrastructure, an expensive and time-consuming process. The second relates to their being gaps in coverage, meaning that crucial information regarding potential points of weakness in your organization’s security posture go undetected or unreported — this owing to the misconfiguration of security solutions. The reality of the situation is that there is little to no correlation between the level of investment in security solutions and the actual security of an organization’s data and information technologies.

To address the issue of non-interoperable technology, and to facilitate the practice of Purple Teaming between the VRT and your organization’s Blue Team, Highground Cyber has developed Ridgeline. Ridgeline calls on Highground Cyber’s Marine Corps Operating Doctrine-inspired philosophy, serving as a pre-packaged, pre-integrated collection of all the essential security solutions needed to run a compliant and resilient Cybersecurity & Privacy Program. However, because it is also designed to facilitate Purple Teaming, Ridgeline as a technology is inseparable from the services of the VRT.

In essence, Ridgeline is purpose built for small and midmarket business, ensuring that they have everything they need and nothing they don’t from the standpoint of security solutions.