Innovator Spotlight: Cymulate

AI Copilot: Revolutionizing Threat Exposure Validation

by Samridhi Agarwal, Master’s Student, CMU

During BlackHat, Cymulate, a leader in security and exposure validation, has officially launched Cymulate AI Copilot, an innovative, generative AI-powered tool designed to automate the deployment, testing, and tuning of security controls based on real-time threat intelligence. This solution empowers security teams to keep up with emerging threats, providing rapid, custom threat assessments and actionable insights. Brian Moran, Director of Product Marketing for Cymulate, highlights a critical issue: “With public information on emerging threats often coming at a critical point in their exploitation, security teams need a way to assess and respond to these new risks rapidly.”

Cymulate AI Copilot addresses this challenge by providing an intelligent, automated system that can quickly translate threat intelligence into actionable security assessments. This tool significantly reduces the time and expertise required to create and deploy custom threat simulations.

Key Features of Cymulate AI Copilot:

• Automatically generates custom attack simulations based on user-supplied threat intelligence. This tool can simulate both predetermined and emerging threats, speeding up control assessments.
• Offers clear, easy-to-understand explanations of security findings, with prioritized actions and technical reports.
• Provides personalized guidance on best practices, leveraging a chatbot powered by natural language processing.
• Continuously reviews and reports on the status of assessments, highlighting obstacles to their completion and offering actionable feedback.

The Cymulate AI Copilot is like having a professional assist on your SecOps team—offering immediate and expert-level insights. By incorporating a dynamic attack planner, the tool takes threat intelligence input, simulates attack chains, and tests security controls—all in record time. Even advanced assessments that would take days for an expert to create are now automated and delivered within minutes. The AI Copilot turns high-level threat intelligence, such as news articles or specific techniques (like using Mimikatz for credential theft or PsExec for lateral movement), into executable attack scenarios. It even extrapolates additional attack steps (e.g., IP scanning for lateral movement) to build comprehensive simulations.

What Brian Moran has to say: “Cymulate AI Copilot is not just another assistant that needs training and cleanup. It’s designed to be the perfect assist for SecOps teams, much like a star player setting up their teammate for success. It uplevels any SecOps analyst, security architect, or blue teamer to automate security validation like an expert pen tester.”

Cymulate emphasizes that AI Copilot is built with security and privacy at its core. The tool operates on a private instance of Azure AI, ensuring that sensitive customer data never leaves the Cymulate platform. Cymulate AI Copilot’s ability to convert external threat intelligence into tailored attack assessments is groundbreaking. In one example, it was used to create a 57-step chain for a ransomware attack simulation in minutes—a task that would take even seasoned security professionals hours. Beyond the attack simulations, Cymulate AI Copilot provides automated analysis of assessment results. The tool highlights critical weaknesses, provides mitigation steps, and offers a snapshot of the organization’s security posture, helping prioritize responses to high-risk areas.

Cymulate’s AI Copilot represents a significant advancement in automated cybersecurity tools. By leveraging the power of AI to rapidly translate threat intelligence into actionable security assessments, Cymulate is empowering organizations to stay ahead of emerging cyber threats. As the cybersecurity landscape continues to evolve, tools like AI Copilot will be crucial in helping security teams maintain robust defenses against increasingly sophisticated attacks.

About the Author

Samridhi Agarwal is an award-winning woman in cybersecurity, a reporter for Cyber Defense Magazine, and currently pursuing a master’s degree in information security at Carnegie Mellon University. She is passionate about emerging technology and cybersecurity, with four years of industry experience as a cybersecurity associate and solution advisor. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with various clients and industries, analyzing their security infrastructure and implementing measures to address vulnerabilities in alignment with industry standards such as NIST and ISO27001. She is committed to continuous learning and exploring advancements to enhance global security and safeguard data. Samridhi can be reached online at [email protected]