Assumed Breach Assessment

WorkNest Secure

Simulates a post-exploitation scenario to evaluate how your organisation detects, responds to, and contains an internal threat.

Unlike a classic red team engagement, assumed breach concentrates on lateral movement, privilege escalation, and impact delivery, providing faster turnaround and actionable insights.

Typically, you provide initial access, often representing high-risk personas (groups, users or machines). We then evaluate internal defences, validate controls, and measure breach impact without the resource demands of full intrusion simulation.

Why WorkNest Secure for Attack Simulation?

Informed by research into active and emerging threats relevant to your sector, with this engagement, we use a structured, phase-based approach to pursue predefined objectives around critical assets.

It provides the strategic value of a threat-led assessment with flexible delivery options.

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CREST Accredited

Validating the quality of our testing methodologies and ethical standards.

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Expert Team

Our seasoned red team personnel bring years of adversarial expertise and insight to every engagement.

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Tailored Engagements

Every engagement is designed around your unique threat profile, business priorities and security maturity.

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Regulated Experience

Proven experience delivering TIBER-EU and DORA-aligned assessments across financial, retail, media, and CNI sectors.

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Complete Transparency

Clear communication throughout engagements with ongoing updates and post-exercise walk-throughs.

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Post-Engagement Support

We help you interpret results, prioritise remediation, and strengthen your defences with actionable guidance.

What to Expect

An assumed breach assessment shows how far an attacker could progress with initial access, revealing internal security weaknesses and providing clear guidance to strengthen detection and response.

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Key Features

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Initial access simulation
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High-risk persona evaluation
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Post-compromise assessment
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Defence-in-depth testing
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Response capability analysis

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Outcomes

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Understanding of post-breach blast radius
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Identification of internal security gaps
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Access control effectiveness review
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Strategic defence recommendations
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Detection capability evaluation
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Containment strategy evaluation

Our Process

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 comprehensive report outlining attack paths, defensive gaps, and prioritised remediation. Optional replay sessions and workshops help your teams learn from the exercise.

Why Teams Love Us

From robust threat defence to dependable regulatory assurance, our cyber-security service helps organisations stay resilient, safeguard their data, and concentrate on what truly drives their success.

“I’ve taken WorkNest into every organisation that I’ve worked with. I’ve introduced them to many teams and many colleagues and referred them with absolute pleasure because I genuinely trust in the service that we get.”

Joanne Beaver

Operations Director, Beaverfit

"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."

Nick Fryer

Paymentsense - Europe largest merchant service provider, CTO

“We moved our legal support to WorkNest having previously used a time and line law firm. It was important, though, that an all-inclusive fee structure did not come at the expense of quality. Thankfully we’ve been delighted with the service we’ve received from WorkNest"

Chief Executive

Waverley Care

"WorkNest supported us with a detailed application penetration test and forensic analysis on one of our key payment-related systems. Their consultants quickly identified underlying vulnerabilities and provided clear insight into how these issues could be addressed."

IT Manager

Leeds United Football Club