May 21, 2026

We all adhere to continuous security validation best practices in our daily lives, even if we don’t realize it.  We lock our doors and check the windows before going to bed. We set our alarms before leaving the house and make sure the garage door shuts all the way before backing out of the driveway. 

These seemingly simple acts let us find and fix issues in real-time to keep our homes safe. But how often do we validate that our organization’s cybersecurity protective measures are working as intended? 

If you’re like most, the answer is “once per year.” While that’s a start, it’s not enough to keep up with rapidly evolving threats.

Historically, organizations have relied on their annual penetration test to find and fix the misconfigurations that result in missed signals. While compliance testing is necessary, and will never go away, a simple look at recent statistics tells us why this approach alone is no longer effective. 

• The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) published 48,174 CVEs  in 2025. That’s nearly a 21% increase over 2024. 
• Each month presented an average of 4000 new CVEs.
• 38% of the CVEs published last year were ranked as High or Severe.
• So far this year, submissions to Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Known Exploited Vulnerability (CISA KEV) database are clocking in at roughly one-third more than the same period last year, with a projected 2026 trajectory that could surpass 60,000 published CVEs.

This data shines a light on today’s threat landscape reality: threat actors hit harder, move faster, and find weaknesses faster than ever before. Annual penetration testing alone can no longer keep up.

Continuous security validation is the process of automating security testing to verify that an organization’s security controls, configurations, and defenses effectively detect, prevent, and respond to real-world cyber threats as intended, even as those threats change.

To get a better understanding, we need to look at the Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) framework and where it intersects with security validation. CTEM reframes the discussion around exposure management to focus on identifying all potential threats to our environment, while also ensuring that defenses align with threat evolution. 

Meanwhile, the percentage of exploitable vulnerabilities remains fairly consistent at between 5 and 6%. That means the total number of exploitable vulnerabilities increases year-over-year  in lock-step with the total number of CVEs. CTEM provides a five-step process to keep ahead of that upward trend by:

• Identifying in-scope assets (e.g., systems, applications, networks, devices, etc.)
• Discovering potential threats and vulnerabilities within that scope
• Prioritizing remediation activities
• Validating the vulnerabilities that pose a threat within your environment, and
• Mobilizing your teams to remediate the most critical exposures first

Within the validation phase of CTEM, we ensure that the vulnerabilities identified during the discovery phase pose a risk to our environment. We then use that information to implement compensating controls. But how do we know that those controls work under pressure?

How does Security Validation Pressure Test Security Controls?

Security validation pressure tests security controls by evaluating how they perform against realistic attack techniques under real-world conditions. Rather than assuming a firewall rule, endpoint protection platform, or email filter is working as intended, validation confirms whether those controls can detect, prevent, and respond to active, current threats. This becomes especially important for compensating controls protecting legacy or unpatchable systems, where failure can create significant exposure.

As organizations mature their CTEM programs, validation must evolve from a point-in-time exercise into a continuous process. Different tools and methodologies help organizations balance cost, coverage, and operational impact while maintaining consistent testing over time. 

At a high level, continuous security validation best practices can be organized into three core pillars: 

• Penetration testing identifies exploitable weaknesses and measure how effectively defenses withstand realistic attacker behavior.
• Tool and response validation through Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) and purple teaming to verify that security controls, detections, and incident response processes function as intended under active attack scenarios.
• Social engineering, including phishing, vishing, and smishing simulations to evaluate human risk, reinforce security awareness, and measure employee resilience against social engineering attacks.

Best Practice #1: How Does Penetration Testing Support Continuous Security Validation?

Penetration testing shows how an attacker could realistically break into your environment. The goal is to uncover exploitable weaknesses before a threat actor finds them.

Going back to our home security analogy from the introduction, penetration testing looks for the digital equivalent of unlocked doors, open windows, hidden spare keys, or a box to kick under the garage door sensor that you might not notice. The threat actor’s goal is simple: get in by any means necessary.

During a penetration test, offensive security experts focus on finding and exploiting weaknesses in systems, applications, identities, devices, and networks. Security controls only matter if they actively block the attack and alert your team. In more advanced exercises, such as red-team engagements, testers go a step further using evasive techniques to avoid detection and chain together multiple attack tactics to simulate real-world threat actor behavior.

With evolving threat actor techniques and the rapid rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven attacks, penetration testing has adapted to become scalable, integrated, and automated. Modern, automated penetration testing platforms can identify attack paths, chain vulnerabilities together, and continuously test environments at scale. This shift helps move away from the traditional “once-a-year-only” penetration testing mindset by putting powerful tools and prioritized threat intelligence in the hands of defenders. 

Organizations are increasingly using automated penetration testing platforms to:

• Penetration test after patch day
• Continuously identify exploitable attack paths within rapidly changing cloud and hybrid environments
• Validate compensating controls protecting legacy or unpatchable systems
• Test detection and response capabilities against emerging threat techniques and zero-day attacks
• Measure the effectiveness of segmentation, identity, and endpoint controls
• Prioritize remediation activities based on business impact rather than CVE severity scores alone
• Reduce the exploitable time gap between vulnerability discovery, validation, and remediation

Tool and response validation, including BAS platforms and purple-teaming exercises, measures how well your security controls detect, alert, and respond during attacks. The purpose of this pillar is to understand how well your defensive technologies alert and how your red and blue teams respond and coordinate when faced with malicious or suspicious activities.

In terms of home security, this is where our alarm system comes into play. If someone opens a protected window, does the alarm trigger? Does the monitoring company respond within the agreed-upon timeframe? Do you motion sensors detect intruders across the entirety of your property, or are they missing blind spots? Bringing it back to cybersecurity, your purple-team exercises and BAS platforms provide insight into your alert fidelity, response windows, and detection efficacy.

BAS tools simulate attacker behavior in controlled ways to validate security controls such as Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools, Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools, firewalls, email security gateways, and identity platforms. Unlike penetration testing, which focuses on simulating attacks, BAS and purple teaming measure your overarching threat visibility, detection quality, and response effectiveness. They aim to help you understand where gaps exist in coverage and processes.

BAS platforms and purple-team exercises are critical to ongoing security validation because they:

• Verify that SIEM, EDR, firewall, and identity controls generate accurate alerts
• Validate incident response processes and analyst workflows under realistic attack scenarios
• Identify detection gaps for common attacker techniques and living-off-the-land activity
• Measure security control effectiveness against MITRE ATT&CK techniques
• Fine-tune alerting logic to reduce false positives and missed detections
• Test compensating controls without waiting for a real-world attack
• Validate logging, telemetry, and visibility across hybrid and cloud environments
• Improve coordination between offensive and defensive security teams 

Best Practice #3: Why is Social Engineering Vital to Continuous Security Validation?

Social engineering mimics the real-world attacks threat actors wage against the organization’s weakest link – their people. Threat actors regularly target people because humans are often easier to exploit than hardened systems. Phishing emails, vishing phone calls, smishing text messages, and physical intrusion attempts are all designed to bypass technical defenses by manipulating trust, urgency, or curiosity. That makes employees a critical part of the organization’s overall security posture. 

In our home security analogy, this pillar answers questions like: what happens when someone rings the doorbell or calls on the phone? Who answers? What information do they share? Do they unknowingly let a stranger into the house or give vital details that a would-be attacker can use against them?

Social engineering validation programs typically combine phishing simulations, security awareness training, and role-based education to reinforce secure behaviors over time. Modern social engineering validation platforms also integrate with email security technologies and identity platforms to provide continuous testing feedback loops. They send simulation emails, texts, and calls, measure user interactions, and provide real-time training to reinforce policy and procedure adherence. These platforms also give leadership visibility into user risk, reporting behavior, and training effectiveness.

Unlike compliance-driven awareness programs that focus only on annual training completion, continuous social engineering validation helps organizations understand how employees respond under realistic conditions. The goal is not to “trick” users, but to identify where additional education, process improvements, or technical safeguards may be needed.

Organizations implement automated social engineering validation platforms to:

• Test employee susceptibility to phishing, vishing, and smishing attacks
• Measure how quickly users report suspicious activity to security teams
• Validate incident response procedures for credential theft and account compromise
• Reinforce secure decision-making through continuous awareness training
• Identify high-risk departments, roles, or user groups requiring additional support
• Evaluate physical security procedures through badge testing and onsite social engineering
• Improve organizational resilience against business email compromise (BEC) and identity attacks
• Build a stronger security culture across both technical and non-technical teams

Stay Ahead of Threats with Continuous Security Validation 

With the introduction of AI-driven attacks, threat actors are moving faster than ever. Meanwhile, the number of exploitable vulnerabilities continues to grow year over year. Organizations can no longer rely on point-in-time assessments to understand their security posture. Continuous security validation provides a more realistic approach by regularly testing technical controls, response processes, and human behavior against evolving threats.

By combining the continuous security validation best practices of automated penetration testing, regularly cadenced tool and response validation, and integrated social engineering exercises, organizations gain deeper visibility into gaps, how defenses perform under pressure, and which risks require immediate attention. More importantly, continuous validation helps security teams move from assumptions to evidence-based decision making.

Building a mature continuous security validation program requires the right mix of people, processes, and technology. Many organizations choose to partner with experienced offensive security experts who can help design validation strategies, integrate and operationalize testing platforms, and align security efforts with business risk.

To learn more about how modern penetration testing and continuous validation strategies are evolving, and to learn how to evaluate partners in the space, check out our eBook: “Modern Penetration Testing: The Evolution to Continuous Security Validation.”