Security Control Validation: Why Testing Once Isn’t Enough
No security team plans for failure. Yet time and again, when real-world attack simulations are launched, critical gaps in detection and response emerge — even in well-funded, mature environments.
Why? Because traditional security assessments and out-of-the-box tool configurations aren’t enough to protect against adversaries. Organizations need continuous security control validation — real, ongoing testing to ensure their defenses are detecting and stopping threats before damage is done. This concept is reinforced by guidance from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which emphasizes the importance of assessing whether controls are implemented correctly, operating as intended, and producing the desired outcome — not just whether they exist.
The Problem: Security Control Failures Are Everywhere
Even in environments with top-tier security investments — endpoint protection, SIEMs, EDR/XDR platforms — critical controls often fail silently:
- Alerts don’t trigger when ransomware executes.
- Lateral movement activities go undetected.
- Evasion techniques bypass EDRs completely.
- Response teams are delayed because detections never reach them.
These gaps aren’t because teams are negligent. They’re because security control testing isn’t happening regularly enough — and attackers evolve faster than static defenses.
Why Continuous Security Validation Changes the Game
Traditional security controls assessments (often checklist-driven) validate whether a control exists — not whether it works against real threats.
Continuous security testing and validation changes the approach by:
- Regularly simulating adversary behavior mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework
- Testing detection, response, and containment capabilities across your live environment
- Identifying misconfigurations and telemetry gaps before attackers do
- Enabling security teams to adjust and optimize quickly, not after a breach
When security leaders embed continuous security control validation into their programs, they move from passive monitoring to proactive resilience.
How OnDefend Helps Teams Validate What Matters
At OnDefend, we specialize in threat detection and response validation that goes beyond traditional pentests. Pentests are our bread and butter, so we know the gaps our customers have. Our approach leverages real-world attack simulations — including ransomware, lateral movement, and data exfiltration — to ensure your security controls perform when it matters most.
Whether you’re validating EDR/XDR investments, preparing for regulatory audits, or strengthening your incident response posture, our testing provides the evidence you need to:
- Improve mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR)
- Close critical visibility gaps
- Justify security investments with real outcomes
Security Controls Can’t Be Assumed. They Must Be Proven.
Every day without continuous validation is a day you’re trusting your defenses blindly. Let’s change that. Talk to our team about security control validation. Contact us here.
Want to learn why continuous security control validation is critical? Read this blog next.
Beyond MITRE ATT&CK Coverage: How Proactive Testing Turns Frameworks Into Real Defense
Most security teams talk about MITRE ATT&CK coverage. But attackers don’t care about your roadmap. Here’s how OnDefend combines penetration testing, attack simulations, and tabletop exercises to proactively validate security controls and prepare teams for real-world threats.
MITRE ATT&CK Framework Is Only the Beginning
The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a powerful tool in modern cybersecurity. It maps real-world adversary behavior in detail, helping security teams understand how attacks unfold and where controls should detect and respond.
But there’s a gap.
Many organizations focus on MITRE ATT&CK coverage — aligning tools and detections with as many techniques as possible. Yet this alone doesn’t answer the question that truly matters:
“Will our security controls actually stop a real attacker, and do we have the visibility we need?”
At OnDefend, we’ve found that while MITRE ATT&CK is the right starting point, organizations must go further. By combining penetration testing, breach and attack simulation (BAS), and tabletop exercises, security teams can continuously validate their defenses, drill their response, and measurably reduce their threat exposure.
Coverage Isn’t Protection
Security tools often claim broad MITRE ATT&CK coverage. But in our work with customer environments across industries, we’ve consistently noticed that security controls fail in unexpected ways:
- Email security gateways allowing payloads that mimicked known adversaries or ransomware delivery methods
- Endpoint solutions missing common PowerShell-based execution tactics
- SIEM tools logging events but failing to alert or trigger response playbooks
- Third-party MDR vendors receive the alert, but fail to respond according to SLA
These gaps aren’t due to lack of effort — they’re due to misconfigurations, untested assumptions, and limited visibility. And the only way to uncover them is to continuously simulate real-world attacks and observe how the environment actually responds.
From Map to Mission: Turning MITRE Into Real Testing
OnDefend uses the MITRE ATT&CK framework as the foundation for our proactive internal and external testing methodology. Whether we’re simulating supply chain attacks, ransomware, phishing, lateral movement, or exfiltration, each test is mapped directly to tactics and techniques that reflect real adversary behavior.
This gives security teams:
- Clarity on how tools perform against specific attack vectors
- A prioritized view of what needs tuning or remediation
- Evidence for internal stakeholders and auditors
Combine Pentesting + Attack Simulation for Full Coverage
Penetration testing shows where attackers can get in. Breach and attack simulations show what happens when they do.
That’s why OnDefend helps organizations layer both:
- Penetration Testing: Identify vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and weak points
- BlindSPOT Simulation: Using our Breach & Attack Simulation tool, BlindSPOT, we validate whether detection, alerting, and response tools and workflows function as intended
This layered approach ensures that the prevention, detection, and response controls are being tested in a safe, transparent way.
To see how attack simulation works in the real world, check out our Ransomware Defense Validation case study, where simulated attacks revealed critical detection gaps—and helped the security team fix them before a real adversary could exploit them.
Validate, Then Drill: Tabletop Exercises That Stick
After the attack simulation, the next step is training the people. OnDefend conducts tabletop exercises based on the same MITRE techniques identified during testing.
We run custom sessions that simulate attack scenarios mapped to actual test findings.
These include:
- Credential harvesting followed by lateral movement
- Endpoint compromise that bypasses EDR detection
Participants include not just the security team, but also IT, legal, communications, and executive leadership. The result? Everyone understands their role, refines their playbooks, and builds muscle memory for real-world events.
Out-of-the-Box Thinking for Out-of-the-Box Threats
Cyber adversaries evolve fast. That’s why cybersecurity leaders need more than annual checklists and static reports. They need a continuous, dynamic approach to validation that keeps up with threat actors.
OnDefend is redefining what proactive security testing looks like by combining:
- Real-world attack simulation
- MITRE ATT&CK alignment
- Transparent, non-disruptive testing
- Realistic tabletop exercises
The Takeaway
MITRE ATT&CK is the right foundation. But attackers don’t stop at frameworks, and neither should you.
Security leaders who want to stay ahead of real-world threats must do more than cover tactics on paper. They must simulate, test, validate, and drill — continuously.
While many cybersecurity firms offer tabletop exercises as a stand-alone service, OnDefend integrates them directly into our proactive testing methodology. This approach ensures every exercise is rooted in actual testing results — not hypothetical scenarios. By combining penetration testing, breach and attack simulation, and collaborative tabletop exercises, we help organizations uncover vulnerabilities, validate defenses, and prepare teams to respond effectively.
That’s how you turn frameworks into real defense.
Ready to see how your security controls hold up to real attacks? We’ll help you connect simulation findings to technical gaps, board reporting, and actual risk reduction. Talk to our team today about running a real-world attack simulation and tabletop exercise. Contact us here.