Start of my POV:
In BFSI, most of them spend millions on security controls: EDRs, SIEMs, DLPs, WAFs, firewalls. Vendors pitch them as silver bullets, and procurement signs cheques because who dares say no to security?
But here’s the uncomfortable question: who validates whether those million-dollar controls actually deliver what OEMs claim?
It’s not only about whether an EDR spotted a payload, or if a DLP stopped sensitive file movement. It’s about whether the OEM’s million-dollar license actually delivers resilience when tested under fire.
PPT Slide decks or POCs don’t stop breaches. BAS does.
That’s where my thinking shifted. BAS isn’t just a purple team tool for defense readiness inside CTEM, it becomes a business weapon. It validates, yes. But more importantly, it gives you negotiation leverage against OEMs charging enterprise premiums while quietly missing real-world attacks.
The Old Game-Paying for Promises:
Vendors/OEM sell a dream “Our EDR stops ransomware, our DLP blocks insider leaks, our SIEM gives total visibility, our WAF blocks every threat.”
Renewal comes, procurement signs millions again.
But when reality plays out, the shortcomings become clear:
- EDR misses obfuscated payload and shadow copy deletion.
- DLP lets sensitive data slip out over various channels.
- SIEM floods dashboards with noise but misses the chain.
- WAF looks impressive on paper, but lateral moves pass unhindered.
- IAM misconfigurations let service accounts pivot into crown-jewel stores and IAM vendors rarely get this tested.
We don’t pay for proof, we pay for promises. Year after year, license costs keep climbing with some new fancy add-ons.
Slide decks assure ‘99% coverage, AI, behavioural detection, and other buzzwords.’ Yet when BAS runs a real attack chain, the truth is laid bare. Critical gaps like data exfiltration remain unaddressed.
That’s the old game: trust the pitch, ignore the gaps, and keep the OEM wheel spinning with our budgets.
The Current Game-Reality Check:
Once BAS runs in an environment, nothing stays the same: OEM claims are validated under real-world conditions. Controls thought to be airtight start showing vulnerabilities with their flawed policies and misconfiguration. Dashboards that once gave comfort now scream with overlooked gaps.
The integration is small, but the impact is massive. Teams finally see what works, what fails, and where risk truly lies. BAS doesn’t deal in assumptions, it delivers fact-based results. Every high-impact tactic that slips through isn’t a theory anymore; it’s logged evidence staring everyone in the face.
And that’s where the tension begins. BAS doesn’t just challenge vendors,
it challenges us. Security teams, product owners, even executives who signed off on compliance dashboards suddenly see that “handled alerts” don’t equal resilience. BAS makes enemies because it removes excuses.
But that’s exactly its value every gap it uncovers becomes a call to action.
The fallout is productive. This phase is a bit rough for both the BAS operator and the other security teams until the mitigation steps are mapped.
Some vendors will resist so hard they’ll try to discredit the BAS tests rather than improve. The arms race will intensify. Parameters are tightened. Shadow IT teams get dragged into the light.
Those “we’ll fix it later” leaks finally climb to the top of the list. The conversations shift from comfort in promises to discomfort in proof.
The Current Game is internal. It’s about awareness, accountability, and responsibility.
It’s about forcing the right people to understand the how and the why of security not just the what. BAS becomes the compass, pulling organizations from assumption to reality, from blind spending to evidence driven security posture.
The New Game-Valuation, brochures vs receipts:
When BAS first enters, it exposes cracks. But when it matures inside an organization, the game shifts completely.
Now, every OEM/vendor promise has receipts.
Every overlooked misconfiguration, every policy gap, every silent miss is logged not as theory but as hard data.
And that data becomes a weapon at the boardroom.
Renewal isn’t about who has the best marketing brochure anymore
Renewal is about evidence:
This is where your solution broke under real attack simulation.
This is where we had to step in because your coverage failed.
This is where alerts were created by BAS but not detected or reported by Security Solution.
For BFSI, this is power.
Because for once, it’s not just spending under pressure it’s negotiating with backbone. BAS has already done the hard part: stripping away comfort, removing excuses, forcing visibility.
OEMs can’t hide behind “will check with team and update” or inflated protection scores. Either they fix, or they justify, or they face reduced valuation.
This is the new game.
Renewals are no longer driven by faith, but by evidence and that evidence gives BFSI the leverage to set the terms. This is where CTEM provides the broader context: BAS is not an isolated tool but a critical stage in a continuous, risk-based approach.
What’s CTEM ?
Not a tool but a risk-based approach
CTEM is not a single product, but a continuous, risk-based approach to identifying, prioritizing, and mitigating exposures across the organization. It ensures security teams focus on the most critical threats, rather than chasing every vulnerability in the stack.
Gartner CTEM in Five Steps:
When Gartner first introduced Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM), it shifted the conversation. CTEM wasn’t pitched as just another tool or dashboard; it was framed as a programmatic approach to continuously diagnosing and acting on the exposures that truly matter, a Proactive approach .
Gartner breaks CTEM into five steps three in the diagnosis stage and two in the action stage:
Diagnosis → Scoping, Discovery, Prioritization
Action → Validation, Mobilization
These steps aren’t meant to be a rigid, one way pipeline. In reality, they loop and feed each other. For example, validation often uncovers unexpected exposures, which then demand a fresh look at prioritization. Likewise, a newly discovered asset might be too critical to push into a future cycle it must be pulled back into the current one. CTEM is deliberately flexible: it treats exposure management as a continuous cycle, not a quarterly checklist or once in blue moon.
The Five Stages of Gartner CTEM:
1. Scoping
Define the security areas and boundaries to assess.
Identify critical assets, business priorities, and likely adversaries.
Note: “Know what matters most before you chase every vulnerability.”
2. Discovery
Map exposures across assets: vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, identity weaknesses, and shadow IT.
Tools include external attack surface management (EASM) and active scanning.
Note: “You can’t protect what you don’t see.”
3. Prioritization
Rank exposures based on exploitability, business impact, and attacker behavior.
Frameworks: EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System), SSVC (Stakeholder Specific Vulnerability Categorization).
Consider attack path analysis to see how multiple weaknesses could chain into a high impact compromise.
Note: “Not all gaps are equal in focus where the attacker would first strike.”
4. Validation ~ where BAS kicks in
Test whether prioritized exposures can actually be exploited.
BAS, pentesting, and red teaming simulate real attacks.
Note: “Theory meets reality, proof is better than assumption.”
5. Mobilization
Turn validated findings into coordinated action across teams.
Feed insights into security operations, procurement, and executive decisions.
Note: “Security becomes a business enabler when insights lead to accountable action.”
Conclusion, a closing Note on CTEM:
CTEM isn’t just another Gartner acronym to park on a slide show, it’s a working discipline. The real value lies in how it forces organizations to stop chasing noise and start aligning security with business impact. With scoping, discovery, and prioritization, you learn where the fire could start. With validation, BAS ensures the flames aren’t just theoretical. And mobilization ensures fixes aren’t buried in ticket queues but actually move the needle.
The benefit? Security stops being reactive firefighting and becomes risk-driven execution. Teams know what matters, leaders see proof instead of promises, and investments finally map back to resilience.
CTEM isn’t designed to satisfy compliance; it is designed to safeguard continuity.
if you want to explore CTEM in greater depth, I’d strongly suggest the Cymulate CTEM whitepaper it provides an excellent overview from theory to implementation.
The real winners in this new game aren’t the claims,
They’re the organizations that uses the BAS + CTEM approach to put hard evidence behind every dollar they spend.
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Na chal-kapāṭena raxṣā, na vākyaiḥ viśvāsaḥ; Raxitānām pramāṇena, satyam eva tiṣṭhati.
(Neither trick nor speech brings protection, nor trust;
Through proof of protection, truth alone stands firm.)
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