What is BAS 2.0 and Why You Need It

In a fast-evolving threat landscape, traditional Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) tools are limited. Built based on predefined scenarios, they’re great for testing against a range of TTPs to validate specific controls but they fall short in providing continuous visibility of exposures across an organization’s attack surface.

It’s time to evolve to BAS 2.0. Unlike traditional, agent-based BAS, BAS 2.0 solutions safely emulate real attacker behavior across the entire IT environment, continuously adapting to identify and prioritize genuine exposures based on actual risk. This next-generation approach doesn’t rely on rigid playbooks and agent-dependent simulations —instead, it provides comprehensive security validation with much greater dynamism and much less operational overhead.

For a cyber defense that needs to keep up with today’s threats, BAS 2.0 delivers where traditional BAS cannot: dynamic, autonomous exposure validation that prioritizes and addresses risks as they emerge.

Gartner has recently placed both BAS and Automated Pentesting categories within the broader new category of Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV). AEV is one of the core technologies for supporting continuous exposure management and was therefore included in their CTEM framework for continuous enterprise-wide exposure discovery and reduction. BAS 2.0 embodies the convergence of the best of these two categories into one product: it combines BAS capabilities with automated penetration testing techniques, providing proven adversarial exposure insights and accurate remediation prioritization.

So let’s dive into the difference between traditional BAS solutions and BAS 2.0 and the benefits to be realized by upgrading.

Real attacks Vs Synthetic

Traditional BAS solutions operate on a flawed assumption: that assets across the network are uniformly configured. They provide information on specific controls being tested and are prescriptive, assessing only anticipated gaps in the environment. BAS 2.0 flips the script, offering 0-risk emulated attacks across production IT environments assessing all the possible gaps that a real world attacker would exploit. If you’re still using standard BAS simulations, it’s time to challenge your actual deployed security controls, networks, endpoints and configurations like an adversary would.

Algorithms Vs Playbooks

Another disadvantage to using the traditional BAS solution is its limitation to prescriptive playbook-based testing which fails to account for the adaptive tactics of a threat actor. For this reason in particular BAS 2.0 is a game changer. Using algorithm-based attack propagation it dynamically pursues an attack path, mimicking the range of security flaws an adversary might exploit, recalculating the process with every successful attack step. This provides more contextual test findings of your security posture, and enables you to discover the “unknown unknowns” that are open to being exploited.

Impact-Based Prioritization Vs TTP-Based Focus

Traditional BAS solutions offer thousands of attack scenarios that can be run prescriptively to find specific flaws, but lack context on which ones really matter. They list successfully exploited TTPs without following through to validate the actual business impact that an adversary could cause. In contrast, BAS 2.0 prioritizes vulnerabilities based on hard proof that they lead to digital assets being exposed, stolen, or corrupted. It does this by testing complete attack kill chains, from root cause to business impact, thereby zeroing in on the vulnerabilities that cause the highest risk exposure.

Agentless Vs Agent-Based

When it comes to agents, less is more. Traditional BAS solutions create operational headaches by requiring agents on endpoint devices, each needing ongoing updates and maintenance, guaranteeing unnecessary complexity and operational overhead. Entirely agentless, BAS 2.0 eliminates this challenge head-on. Deployed using independent attack nodes, it allows you to test different parts of the network fancy-free. Not surprisingly, deployment is faster and operations are kept seamless irrespective of the target environment.

Full Attack Surface Vs Limited Scope

Traditional breach and attack simulations are limited to testing controls on compute nodes. They don’t tell you how secure your environment is against an adversary who could discover new information, attempt varied attack steps, and pivot between networks and environments. BAS 2.0 validates everything — from vulnerabilities and credentials to configurations and data hygiene across your entire production environment. Endpoints, servers, services, and network devices are all tested, and it tracks the entire attack path, showing exactly how vulnerabilities were exploited. The result? More accurate prioritization across a broader range of gaps.

Identity Threat Testing Vs Identity Agnostic

Traditional BAS solutions are like playing detective but with one eye closed—they might sniff out sensitive information, but they stop short of connecting findings and linking discoveries through the attack chain. The result? Limited and isolated attack scenarios that are confined to the host environment where the agent was run. With BAS 2.0 things only start to get interesting at the discovery phase. The solution continues to actively exploit gaps in identity data hygiene by sniffing networks, enumerating files, and scanning for credentials and other sensitive information. Then, it leverages this discovered data to advance attacks, mimicking real adversary tactics to escalate privileges and move laterally through the environment.

Moving Over to BAS 2.0

While traditional BAS certainly had its time you’d be hard-pressed to find a good reason to stick with it when the attack landscape necessitates a much more robust and precise approach. BAS 2.0, takes a broader exposure validation approach, provides a superior, automated solution that reduces cyber risk, improves remediation precision, and streamlines operations. Offering all the assurance of thorough testing without the manual effort, BAS 2.0 leaves no reason to look back.

To learn how to transition to BAS 2.0, look no further than Pentera’s security validation platform