Why Our Customers Choose Active Focus

A few years back, River Security developed and launched Active Focus, a world-first, disruptive IT security technology and service enabling penetration testers to be always-on, properly fighting against the adversary in real-time. We developed Active Focus because of the clear and obvious need for penetration testing to have a stronger real impact on threat actors, allowing penetration testers to de-weaponize the enemy before issues could be exploited. This requires an always-on, continuous approach to penetration testing, and led us to develop Active Focus, the Offensive Security Operations Center. 
 
Our customers will tell you it has revolutionized their approach to IT security. Active Focus, an expert-moderated continuous external penetration testing and attack surface management service, provides businesses with an always-relevant, continuously updated view of what they expose digitally and how their attack surface can be compromised. It is extremely cost effective, providing very good value-for-money. Additionally, many of our customers take the perspective that the traditional reactive SOC is often very expensive and can sometimes provide a false sense of security, see for instance this article: https://riversecurity.eu/the-illusion-of-security/ 
 
Taking Control  

Surprisingly to some of our customers, Active Focus requires very little time investment on their part; in most cases just one single hour per month. Our efficient technology along with the always-on expert-moderation by our IT security team, that continuously micro-pentest changes to the digital attack surface, means that our customers only need to do something actively when immediate action is necessary. While our penetration testers continually work behind the scenes to qualify, test, and expose risk, our customers need only act when there is an issue that needs fixing. Or if they want to have a look at the always up-to-date status on the hygiene of the operations in the portal. Security hygiene issues are those which penetration testers identify as potentially problematic, but that are defined as conditions which cannot currently be exploited by threat actors. Such hygiene issues are of course nice to fix, but do not require immediate prioritization. This distinction between actual risk and hygiene issues is important in order to allow our customers’ security teams to prioritize their day-to-day tasks correctly. The unique layer of security that Active Focus provides, consequently means greatly enhanced protection + more peace of mind for our customers, freeing them to focus on their core business functions. 
 
Compliance with NIS-2, DORA and CIS-18  

NIS-2  

Active Focus helps our customers enhance their governance mechanisms in compliance with the NIS-2 directive, applying a proactive approach to cybersecurity risk with clear responsibilities across all management and operational levels. As detailed in NIS-2 Article 18 and others, measures to prevent and minimize the impact of incidents which may affect the security of systems must be implemented. And this is exactly what Active Focus does. 
 
DORA  

Active Focus assists our customers in meeting the requirements of DORA Article 19 which demands that: 

• Organizations must regularly conduct tests to assess risk, including both vulnerability assessments and penetration testing.
• These tests must include sufficiently advanced testing, including up-to-date methodologies that simulate real-life cyberattacks based on current threat intelligence.

Staying up-to-date with the best methodologies and cyber threat intelligence is what our penetration testers do, as arming ourselves with the latest and most up-to-date information to enable very high-quality penetration testing. And with our advanced Active Focus technologies, we have managed to operationalize thorough and continuous penetration testing performances. 

CIS-18  

Active Focus assists our customers in applying the CIS-18 best practices framework in the following ways: 

• CIS 18.1: Active Focus enforces secure coding by continuously testing applications for vulnerabilities caused by coding errors, ensuring swift correction of any deviations. 
• CIS 18.5: Active Focus manages attack surfaces by continuously identifying and securing all potential network entry points, aligning with the goal of maintaining secure software environments. 
• CIS 18.7: Active Focus alerts development teams to vulnerabilities in unsupported software or libraries, facilitating updates or replacements to comply with this standard. 
• CIS 18.10: By utilizing static and dynamic analysis tools, Active Focus enables early vulnerability detection and quick remediation, maintaining application code integrity and security. 

 Competitive Edge  

In an era of frequent data breaches, both individual and corporate customers are increasingly concerned about information security. Businesses that demonstrate strong IT-security postures, which Active Focus helps our customers attain, can use this as a key part of their branding to signal reliability, reduced risk of data breaches, and all-round regulatory compliance. This in turn builds increased trust, confidence, and loyalty in their customer bases, helping them to attract more new business. Many of our customers, who typically take a very forward-leaning stance on cybersecurity, also often talk with cybersecurity professionals in other organizations about the usefulness of deploying Active Focus, as well as touting their cooperation with River Security in testimonials and customer cases, thus encouraging other companies to do the same.
 
Our Integrated Purple Team Approach to Robust IT Security 

In addition to the dynamic approach to IT security that Active Focus provides – with always-on, continuous, expert-moderated penetration testing and attack surface management, Active Focus also helps integrate our customers’ internal IT defenses with our offensive capabilities via our Purple Teaming approach: By combining our “red” offensive capabilities with our customers’ “blue” defensive strategies, Active Focus acts as a lever that makes the IT security output of red + blue much greater than just the sum of its parts. This allows our customers to quickly seize control and fix what needs to be fixed much faster and to a much greater degree than before. Such that threat actors don’t get the time to find and exploit issues. Creating purple teams with our customers, we become significantly stronger than what would otherwise have been the case. 

Summing Up 

Active Focus represents a world-first, groundbreaking step forward in cybersecurity. It delivers continuous expert-moderated penetration testing and dynamic attack surface management that sets a new, unmatched standard in proactive cyber defense. This service, essentially an offensive-SOC, aligns seamlessly with essential compliance mandates and very significantly strengthens the security posture of all our customers. River Security’s approach not only mitigates risks but also builds trust and supports business continuity. With Active Focus, our customers gain a strong, reliable partner at the forefront of cybersecurity developments, ensuring they are well-equipped to handle all the evolving day-to day challenges of the field.