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.