OnDefend Wrapped: End of the Year Newsdesk
OnDefend News Desk
OnDefend by the numbers
This year OnDefend broke records for our clients. Here’s a few standouts:
-
Two BILLION lines of code reviewed
-
308 reports generated
In the Headlines
OnDefend Expands BlindSPOT to Deliver Continuous Threat Detection and Response Validation
OnDefend, a leader in proactive cybersecurity control validation, has announced two new feature sets within BlindSPOT™, its breach and attack simulation (BAS) platform: Threat Detection Validation and Threat Response Validation.
Continuously test whether detection tools trigger alerts—and whether internal or third-party teams respond in time. BlindSPOT maps to MITRE ATT&CK, tracks MTTD/MTTR, and provides real-time failure alerts so gaps are found before attackers exploit them.
OnDefend Partners with City of Jacksonville to Launch Free Cybersecurity Program for North Florida Nonprofits’
“Securing Nonprofits’ Mission” Initiative to Deliver No-Cost Cyber Training, Risk Assessments, and Executive Strategy for Mission-Driven Organizations
“Nonprofits are the backbone of our community, but many do not have the tools they need to protect themselves, which is essential to securing the future of Northeast Florida,” said Mayor Donna Deegan.
When Tech Gives Back: OnDefend Joins Jacksonville’s Innovators at Give A Hack
Over one high-energy weekend, developers, designers, and innovators teamed up to create real solutions for real challenges faced by nonprofits in our community. It wasn’t just a hackathon it was proof that when people care enough to give a hack, incredible things happen.
Tackling the Ransomware Pandemic: Healthcare Security Leaders Team Up with OnDefend for a New Defensive Approach
A collaboration with hospital systems and their leaders, OnDefend’s new Security Control Validation service reimagines defense strategies through proactive and continuous security control assessments.
Awards
JaxUSA’s Innovator of the Year
The JAXUSA Innovator of the Year Award recognizes an individual or company whose vision, creativity and technological advancements significantly strengthen the Jacksonville region’s competitive position. This award honors exceptional leadership and forward-thinking innovation that drive economic growth, elevate the region’s visibility and inspire new opportunities across Northeast Florida. Recipients embody the spirit of progress through championing new ideas, embracing emerging technologies and contributing to a more dynamic, resilient regional economy.
“OnDefend and Chris Freedman exemplify the type of innovative leadership that is driving Jacksonville’s economy forward,” said JAXUSA Partnership President Aundra Wallace. “Their cutting-edge work strengthens our region’s competitiveness and plays a vital role in attracting new businesses to Northeast Florida.”
2025 Ultimate CEO: Chris Freedman
” Advice I’d give to the next generation is be cautious about scale. I think sustainability is going to be a new measure of success.” – OnDefend CEO Chris Freedman, 2025 Ultimate CEO.
OnDefend has been named to the 2026 Seminole 100, honoring the fastest-growing businesses led by Florida State University alumni
At the helm is OnDefend Co-Founder/CTO and FSU alum Ben Finke, whose leadership continues to drive innovation in offensive security testing and security control validation. Ben is the product owner of BlindSPOT, OnDefend’s proprietary breach and attack simulation tool.
Top 5 fastest growing companies
How did OnDefend land the #4 spot on the Jacksonville Business Journal’s Fast 50 list Sure, we could point to the 116.93% growth — but the real story is what’s behind that number: our team, innovation, and clients who trust us everyday. Thank you!
OnDefend named one of the best places to work
Quantum Workplace conducted anonymous employee surveys that included both closed and open-ended questions. Here’s what some of our employees said:
“OnDefend leadership saw my potential and took a chance, and I have been grateful for that decision ever since.”
“The work I’m involved in, my position in the company, and the people I work with and for are why I can say, this is the best place I have ever worked in my entire career.”
“This is the first time being in a company that appreciates your hard work but also feels that it is important to have that work–life balance.”
Webinars
Exposing Security Control Blind Spots: Attack Simulation in CrowdStrike
In this live technical demo, the OnDefend team shows how real-world adversary behavior, specifically modeled on Scattered Spider TTPs, can silently bypass EDR tools like CrowdStrike when policies, configurations, or visibility aren’t where they need to be.
OnDefend & Akkodis Fireside Chat on Testing, Maturity and Confidence
Cybersecurity isn’t just about compliance – it’s about confidence. Former CISO Bryan Bechard and OnDefend’s Zac Hardy show how structured testing and NIST CSF 2.0 turned uncertainty into executive-level confidence.
Reimagining Ransomware Defense: Revealing and Removing Security Control Failures
Inspired by real-world conversations between Baptist Health CISO James Case and OnDefend CEO Chris Freedman, Ransomware Defense Validation (RDV) was built as a proactive solution tailored to the unique challenges healthcare systems face every day. When asked if their security controls are working properly and effective, we’ve often heard many security leaders respond, “Yes we think so… but there’s no good way to regularly validate it.” Without the right tools to continuously test and validate these security defenses, organizations are relying on the bad guys to do the testing for them.
Welcome to the Team
In 2025, OnDefend welcomed over 35 new team members.
Terin Williams joins as the Director of Strategic Policy Initiatives
Terin brings nearly three decades of leadership to the OnDefend team, while also currently serving as an officer in the National Guard as the National Guard Assistant to the Commander, United States Cyber Command and the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA).
OnDefend welcomes Tim Tomes as Director of Training and Programs.
Tim Tomes’ career spans elite Army Red Team operations, the development of groundbreaking cybersecurity tools, and thousands of hours spent shaping future defenders. His unique blend of deep technical expertise, instructional skill, and mission-first leadership sets him apart as a true force in the cybersecurity world.
OnDefend is excited to welcome Carly Sherrod as our new Director of Threat Intelligence and Programs
With extensive experience in cybersecurity, intelligence, and incident response, Carly will play a pivotal role in enhancing OnDefend’s threat intelligence capabilities and program development.
Message from BlindSPOT’s CTO
It’s rare for us as a company to look back, in fact it’s our job to always be one step ahead but here are the top BlindSPOT features of 2025.
Threat Response Validation (May)
You want to measure Mean-Time-To-Respond, and we want to make that easy for you. As a quick refresher, “Detect” means the alert has been made, “Respond” means a person or bot has seen the alerts and has begun researching or taking some action. This person or bot could be your own or it could be a third-party service you pay for. Traditionally this data is extremely hard to collect, leaving you to use secondary metrics and, frankly, vibes, to determine if that response time is acceptable.
Introducing Threat Response Validation! Threat Response Validation (TRV) gives you the ability to generate realistic attack activity in the environment and then measure the time it takes for the team (or teams) to respond – whatever “respond” means to you. Running these exercises gives you the specific information you need to understand if your Threat Response capability is acceptable.
Project Level Security Tool Log Upload (March)
We previously shared the ability to upload security tool logs at the campaign level. This is a great way to save time without having to go through the full API integration with a security tool. This feature lets you export activity (in whatever the standard format for the tool is) and upload it to BlindSPOT. BlindSPOT will then match that information with the campaign and automatically score the campaign for you. And now, we’ve introduced that at the project level too. Let BlindSPOT handle scoring the entire project through file uploads.
New BlindSPOT Documentation Portal (September)
We recently launched an all-new BlindSPOT documentation site, with updated walkthroughs and information on leveraging the BlindSPOT platform. You’ll also notice it’s not behind any kind of authentication wall, so you can easily send links to relative content to your colleagues as needed.
It’srare or us as a company to look back, in fact it’s our job to always be one step ahead but here are the top BlindSPOT features in 2025.
Thank you for taking the time to read our updates. We are committed as an organization to continue pushing boundaries within the world of innovation. OnDefend & BlindSPOT are the products of that. If you would like to learn more or have any suggested recommendations, please reach out: Contact Us.