Gartner defines adversarial exposure validation (AEV) as technologies that deliver consistent, continuous and automated evidence of the feasibility of an attack. These technologies confirm how potential attack techniques would successfully exploit an organization and circumvent prevention and detection security controls. They achieve this by performing attack scenarios and modeling or measuring the outcome to prove the existence and exploitability of exposures. AEV is generally delivered as a SaaS solution with or without on-premises agents. AEV technologies provide automated execution of both simplified and/or extensible attack scenarios. Results data from an executed attack scenario is used for various outcomes, such as: validating a theoretical exposure as real, automating frequent controls testing, improving preventive security posture or improving detection and response capabilities.
Security consulting firms are advisory and consulting services (see 'Definition: Cybersecurity' ) related to information and IT security design, evaluation and recommendations. These services are procured by various stakeholders in an organization, including boards of directors, CEOs, chief risk officers (CROs), chief information security officers (CISOs), chief information officers (CIOs), and other business and IT leaders for the purpose of obtaining and ensuring acceptable risk levels for a specific client organization.