ENTERPRISE SECURITY

vCISO Services, Pen Testing, & Network Security Solutions

VCISO SERVICES

VCISO - VIRTUAL CISO

CYBERSECURITY STRATEGIES FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

In a world of complex choices, getting the most for your budget is important. VDA Labs strategizes and analyzes to determine where your cybersecurity solutions investment will generate the greatest ROI. Our vCISO services are the key.

SECURITY AWARENESS TRAINING

Are people the weakest link in your organization’s security? Turn your people into defenders with user security awareness training designed to show the value of security, not just the downsides.

PENETRATION TESTING & SECURITY AUDITS

Penetration testing can take many forms but the bottom line is we test your current security posture to enable your decision making.

BLUE TEAM ENGINEERING

Security Engineering is a passion of ours. Managing, fine-tuning, optimizing, and capitalizing on the current day’s most illustrious, precision-engineered SIEM tools. We offer specialized services devoted to comprehensively auditing security tools, settings, mitigating vulnerabilities, and more internal network facets.

INCIDENT RESPONSE

When something goes wrong it’s important to take the right steps – contacting an expert for help may be the key.

vCISO Security Systems Strategy

Navigating the endless maze of next-gen blinky boxes, converged cloud console, and machine learning analysis engines is tough.

VDA Labs has been around the block a few times and we’ve had the chance to work on, with, and most importantly against many of the leading security systems over the years. We know what’s effective in protecting your organization and what will leave you scratching your head, digging through logs, trying to find how you were compromised in a huge haystack of useless data.

VCISO

Bringing in the services of a vCISO from VDA Labs gives you the opportunity to achieve your security goals with an experienced, independent leader. VDA will help put your security program on a roadmap with actionable tasks and measurable results.

A vCISO can handle the heavy lifting. By managing the strategic responsibilities and guiding your in-house staff, VDA provides training and mentoring. We also identify strengths and weaknesses in your team, and identify places where you need additional support. In doing so, we help you free up some of your in-house team’s workload, enabling them to take on other tasks.

A VDA Labs vCISO provides an objective independence to evaluate your team and your security. Because we come from outside your organization, we aren’t stuck with “how we’ve always done it,” or burdened by office politics or agendas. We have the knowledge and reputation to get the job done, and done correctly.

HOW DOES VDA WORK WITH CLIENTS TO BUILD A SECURITY STRATEGY?

The first goal we have is to assess your current security posture. This can be done by active means, such as a penetration test, which is a great way to measure the base-line defensive position of your organization, or in a more general passive way through interviews and information gathering. We then use our decades of experience to make an assessment of your current posture to identify strengths and weaknesses.

Next we work to develop a prioritized road-map customized to your organization that will allow you to move the ball forward on security while gaining the most value for your investment. A critical component is impartiality – we don’t sell solutions for problems you may (or may not!) have, but provide unbiased advice.

WHAT DO WE LOOK FOR WHEN ASSESSING AN ORGANIZATION AND MAKING RECOMMENDATIONS?

Beyond our experience, there are a number of industry standards we can look to in order to evaluate the security posture of an organization. One of our favorites is the Center for Internet Security’s Top 20 Controls, the top five of which are listed below:

  • Inventory of Authorized and Unauthorized Devices
  • Inventory of Authorized and Unauthorized Software
  • Secure Configurations for Hardware and Software
  • Continuous Vulnerability Assessment and Remediation
  • Controlled Use of Administrative Privileges

Want to Build a Better SECURITY STRATEGY?

quotation mark

If you are not investing in cybersecurity – you are putting your organization at risk. We engaged with VDA Labs, and they identified our vulnerabilities, and recommended the steps necessary to mitigate our risk."

— TOM WIEWIORA
Director of Information Services, MasterTag

Security Awareness Training

Are your people your biggest liability or your best defense?

No matter how much your organization invests in next-gen blinky boxes, AI-driven monitoring solutions, or even high-quality infosec talent, sometimes all it takes is one employee opening the wrong email to unleash devastation (financial or otherwise). Phishing campaigns are getting more sophisticated. Bad actors know where to strike. Frequently the missing component in an organization's information security program is user awareness training — internal education that brings your team up to speed on the hacking methods and phishing techniques used by attackers. With an infosec program incorporated into your business or organizational network training efforts, you can achieve peace of mind from the assurance that you're strengthening the first line in your IT defense, instead of the weakest link.

At VDA Labs we love combining our expertise in training with our experiences working on red teams and with incident response into compelling security awareness training solutions. We employ both real world scenarios and seminar based training to develop a culture of vigilance within your workforce. We offer an in-person or live virtual offering, as well as the learning management system digital boss-fight suite referenced below.

Interested in Empowering Your Users to Defend Your Organization?

Cybersecurity Training Suite

Get online training for your business or organization

Help your organization mitigate risk with effective cyber security awareness training that is engaging and retained by end users.

quotation mark

As an IT Professional it’s my job to keep all of our endpoints protected. Even with the best hardware and software to safeguard our domain, it’s not IF we’ll have a breach but WHEN.

This is why we hired VDA Labs to come on site and train and inform our end-users; so not only they can understand how cyber-attacks happen but what to look for. End-users are the first line of defense and I am confident this training has prevented at least one occurrence."

— JOSHUA POTT
IT Manager, Compliance Systems Inc

Penetration Testing & Cybersecurity Audits

Sometimes a good offense is the best defense – this is especially true with penetration testing.

Penetration testing, also referred to as pen testing, is a process designed to help pinpoint the weaknesses in your enterprise network or internal system’s architecture through a simulated attack. Our industry certified team has been trained to think like the bad guys, and we aim to do exactly what they would do to hit your organization where it hurts – compromising systems, processes, and people on the way to uncovering your most valuable (and sensitive) data.
When it’s over we provide a comprehensive report that outlines how we were able to compromise your network (where the breach took place) and the recommended actions you can take to prevent similar attacks in the future.

WHY GET A PENETRATION TEST?

Understanding the investment value of a pen test is easy if you know about the average ROI from a cybersecurity audit – but every organization’s goals are different. Here are some examples of how a penetration test could be invaluable to your organization:

  • Identify weaknesses in defensive network posture in order to direct systems security spending where it matters most
  • Generate buy-in from leadership by showing the potential impact of a serious security incident
  • Gain understanding of offensive tactics through the process. We have an excellent purple teaming process should you desire that.
  • Show due-diligence in pursuing IT security at a meaningful level to your partners and investors. “Compliance is the floor, not the ceiling”
  • Protect against reputational risk associated with a cyber incident

OSINT RECON

We start our process by developing a picture of your organization from the outside using OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) methods – this means compiling a list of systems and personnel we can leverage for our attack.

CRACKING THE PERIMETER

Utilizing the findings from OSINT research, our team will begin looking for cracks in your external perimeter. These might be logins that aren’t sufficiently secured, devices that are not up to date, or people we can target with a phishing campaign. More often than not we will find a way inside.

LATERAL MOVEMENT

Once we have breached the network’s perimeter, we begin probing and looking for opportunities to expand our influence within the network. We will identify and compromise additional key systems as we move towards our goals.

PRIVILEGE ESCALATION

Gaining additional permissions through compromising key systems and accounts is a critical step in the process – our team will identify and pursue every advantage as we move towards our end goal.

LOOTING AND WIN

Every organization has valuable data of some kind to protect, and that is exactly what would be targeted by bad actors if they are able to compromise your network. We go after that same data, whether it’s financial information, PII (personally identifying information), HIPAA protected health care files, etc. We want to show how your crown jewels could be stolen so you can protect them when the real bad guys are making an attempt.

Interested in Penetration Testing Services?

quotation mark

We are very happy with the test results from the pentest that VDA Labs did for us. It has set the stage for the conversations and programs for security we need to have."

— JESSE HULLIHEN
IT Manager, Wolverine Packaging Company

Enterprise Network Engineering (Blue Team)

Architecting, implementing, and managing all facets of an enterprise network is key to preventing security breaches and sensitive data exposure. VDA Labs, by way of its Blue Team members, has the cybersecurity specialists and network engineers ready to help. Whether you need a short-term gap filled during a staff search, or full-time support, we’ve been there. VDA has completed projects across the security spectrum from strategy to incident handling, but here are some of the engineering efforts in the middle that we excel at:

  • SIEM implementation, tuning, and co-managing
  • Security tool investment optimization
  • Architecting network security appliances and applications
  • Rule verification
  • Co-managed SOC
  • Assets, endpoint alerts, malware analysis, and more

Interested in Enterprise Network Solutions?

Cyber Incident Response Plans

We live in a scary time in which the influence of the internet continues to expand, further and further, crossing over into the lives of individuals as well as the operations of organizations.

Enterprise network security risks are around every corner, whether it’s an unskilled "script kiddie" trying to launch an attack, a professional cybercriminal with resources to stay ahead of the best defenses, or a series of advanced, persistent threats that may prove someday soon to steal your data. No matter the threat or the type of malicious actor, without the correct network security solutions put in place, it isn’t a matter of ‘if’ your organization will be compromised, but ‘when.'

That’s why it’s important to have an ally in the fight to defend your online security. Whether you have an unforeseen hacking emergency and need help developing a remediation plan for future strategic measures, our incident response team of experts is here to help!

WHY ENGAGE A PARTNER IN THE MIDST OF AN EMERGENCY?

When the stuff has already hit the fan, a third party can be an invaluable resource in determining the outcome of the situation. Oftentimes internal IT is not equipped to deal with security breaches or other incidents, and may not take the best course of action when it comes to determining the scope and impact of the situation.

PROCESS

Ideally, we’ll have setup in advance, done a threat hunt, and already be in place to help remotely if you’re one of VDA’s retainer customers. If not, no worries, we’ll:

  • Isolate compromised systems and accounts known to be compromised to stop the spread of influence within your systems.
  • Identify the scope and impact of the breach. What has been affected, and how does that impact your ability to operate?
  • Discover the initial attack vector used to gain access, and any tools or techniques employed along the way
  • Analyze any malware found – what were the indicators of compromise (IOCs) that were missed during the attack?
  • Develop a remediation strategy – how can we get back in action fast, in a protected state?
  • Deliver full documentation – we want you to understand what happened, how it happened, what was affected, and most importantly, what to do about it so you can move forward with a stronger defense.

 

quotation mark

I have worked with many pentesting, code reviews, and IR organizations in the past, and VDA Labs stands high above all of them in both their skill and approach. They provide a highly interactive experience – which is uncommon in the world of security testing, which often simply produces a report at the end of the engagement. VDA worked closely with my team throughout the engagements, educating and informing us all along the way. We felt a genuine commitment from VDA to our organization’s safety in an increasingly hostile environment."

— RICH WUNSCH
Director of IT Infrastructure, Information Security Officer, Advanced Radiology Services

SECURITY STARTS WITH OUR SPECTRA MODEL