There’s a significant movement in cybersecurity right now that is seeing organizations approach the problem of cyber defense through the eyes of an attacker. This is very different to the check-box approach often associated with standard security or compliance frameworks – and it requires specialist expertise. However, when properly applied, the attacker mindset helps to lift theoretical security off the clipboard and into the real world. It’s an old cyber truism that hackers don’t care about the compliance accreditations of their targets, so adopting the attacker mindset is crucial in actually understanding what your attacker does care about. Rule #1 – know your enemy.
The first question to answer when applying the attacker mindset is ‘what are our critical assets and who is motivated to attack us?’ Script kiddies, hacktivists, criminals and nation-state actors have differing ranges of both skill and persistence – and also carry different motivations to attack. Understanding this allows us to choose an appropriate lens through which to view cyber defense.