WorkNest Secure
Assumed Breach Assessment
See how well your organisation detects, responds to, and contains an internal threat.
Our Assumed Breach Assessment simulates a post-exploitation scenario where an attacker is already inside your environment.
Our Assumed Breach Assessment simulates a post-exploitation scenario where an attacker is already inside your environment.
Our Assumed Breach Assessment simulates a post-exploitation scenario where an attacker is already inside your environment.
We focus on lateral movement, privilege escalation, and impact delivery, providing faster turnaround and actionable insights.
We focus on lateral movement, privilege escalation, and impact delivery, providing faster turnaround and actionable insights.
What is an Assumed Breach Assessment?
What is an Assumed Breach Assessment?
What is an Assumed Breach Assessment?
An Assumed Breach Assessment starts at a predefined point of compromise rather than simulating an entire attack chain, helping you understand how an attacker could operate once inside your environment and how your internal security measures hold up under real-world conditions.
It validates internal controls, assesses potential organisational impact, and strengthens detection and response capabilities, without the time and resource demands of a full Red Team engagement.
Why WorkNest for an Assumed Breach Assessment?
We assess how effectively your organisation can detect, respond to, and contain internal threats without a full end-to-end attack simulation.
CREST accredited
Proven high-quality testing methodologies and ethical standards.
Targeted, efficient assessment
Receive a focused evaluation of high-risk internal scenarios, focusing on internal behaviour rather than initial access.
Actionable insights
Detailed reporting, attack path analysis, and optional replay sessions to support learning, validation, and improvement.
Regulated experience
Experience delivering TIBER-EU and DORA-aligned assessments across financial, retail, media and CNI sectors.
Complete transparency
Clear communication throughout engagements with ongoing updates and post-exercise walk-throughs.
Post-engagement support
We help you interpret results, prioritise remediation and strengthen your defences with actionable guidance.
Why should you conduct an Assumed Breach Assessment?
Why should you conduct an Assumed Breach Assessment?
Why should you conduct an Assumed Breach Assessment?
Sometimes it is not a question of how attackers can get in, but what they can do once they are inside.
Remove the overhead of initial access testing, allowing deep assessment of lateral movement, escalation, and impact.
Support replay sessions, detection validation, and incident response exercises in a controlled and measurable way.
Gain a clear understanding of how threats could impact your organisation, where gaps exist, and how to close them.
Sometimes it is not a question of how attackers can get in, but what they can do once they are inside.
Remove the overhead of initial access testing, allowing deep assessment of lateral movement, escalation, and impact.
Support replay sessions, detection validation, and incident response exercises in a controlled and measurable way.
Gain a clear understanding of how threats could impact your organisation, where gaps exist, and how to close them.
What to expect
Get deeper, more focused insights into your greatest areas of risk.
Key features
Initial access simulation
High-risk persona evaluation
Post-compromise assessment
Defence-in-depth testing
Response capability analysis
Outcomes
Understanding of post-breach blast radius
Identification of internal security gaps
Access control effectiveness review
Strategic defence recommendations
Detection capability evaluation
Containment strategy evaluation
How we work
Every assessment process will vary as every engagement is unique, but a typical process will look like:
With your control group, we define engagement scope, critical assets/functions, and objectives for targeted, safe testing aligned with operational priorities and regulations.
We simulate attacker access via agreed entry vectors (e.g. valid credentials, workstation access, VPN), avoiding unnecessary perimeter attacks.
This includes privilege escalation, credential harvesting, internal reconnaissance, lateral movement, command and control, and objective-based attacks.
Throughout, we assess what is detected, how quickly, and how effectively your teams respond, to validate visibility, alerting, and response procedures.
We deliver a detailed report covering attack paths, control gaps, and prioritised recommendations, with optional replay sessions and workshops to review learnings with your teams.
Assess your organisation’s ability to respond to internal threats.
FAQs
Yes. Many real-world breaches involve attackers gaining internal access through phishing, supply chain compromise, or stolen credentials. This engagement models what happens after that foothold is established.
We typically use credentials, VPN access, or a dropped agent on an agreed internal host, all carefully controlled and scoped to ensure safety and relevance to the desired scenario and outcomes.
While not a regulated framework itself, and it alone won't meet regulatory requirements, Assumed Breach approaches are often used within TIBER-EU, STAR, or DORA testing programmes as a component to validate internal defences, or as a leg up / de-chaining action.
Yes. Many real-world breaches involve attackers gaining internal access through phishing, supply chain compromise, or stolen credentials. This engagement models what happens after that foothold is established.
While not a regulated framework itself, and it alone won't meet regulatory requirements, Assumed Breach approaches are often used within TIBER-EU, STAR, or DORA testing programmes as a component to validate internal defences, or as a leg up / de-chaining action.
We typically use credentials, VPN access, or a dropped agent on an agreed internal host, all carefully controlled and scoped to ensure safety and relevance to the desired scenario and outcomes.
What our clients say
We’ve always been very impressed with the cyber security services WorkNest provide us. Their professional approach, knowledge and flexibility have ensured they have become a key trusted partner in our supply chain.
Paymentsense
Founder
WorkNest Secure delivered a highly professional and thorough incident response service. Their team’s technical knowledge, attention to detail, and clear communication throughout the process made a complex area easy to navigate. The quality of the analysis and final reporting gave us real assurance and added value to our internal security efforts, minimising the impact to the business.
Shoezone
Head of IT
We provide a broader suite of services designed to strengthen your security posture, support compliance, and build long-term organisational confidence.
Simulate a real-world breach to prove your organisation’s detection and response capabilities under pressure.
Engage in an ongoing engagement designed to monitor and assess your organisation's external attack surface in real-time.
Combine real‑world Attack Simulation with live defender collaboration to improve your detection, response, and security operations.
Test your organisation’s defences against the adversary tactics most likely to target you.
