How SLRs and BAS Strengthen Resilience

Recently, ITSUS Consulting has been demonstrating two solutions that can help organisations strengthen cyber resilience. Palo Alto’s – Security Lifecycle Review (SLR) and Keysight’s Threat Simulator, Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS).

What has stood out most from these technical demonstrations is not just the value of these solutions individually, but how they can support a wider security lifecycle. For many organisations, especially those balancing stretched teams, legacy infrastructure, and increasing security demands, the challenge is not simply finding another tool. It is understanding what is already in place, identifying where the real risks and gaps are, and building practical steps to move forward to reach a desired architecture design, or perhaps a specific goal, such as meeting legislation requirements CE+, CAF, ISO 27001.

 

One of the challenges we’re excited to work on together is how to build the right commercial model around this, making it practical, scalable, and valuable for different organisations. To support this, we take a flexible approach, adapting our support to suit each organisation’s needs rather than offering a one-size-fits-all solution. Some may prefer to receive an ICT Discovery and Audit, and implement the recommendations themselves, while others may benefit from our Training & Knowledge Transfer, in areas such as audit findings, network fundamentals, security, firewalls, or specific tools and configurations. Others may want to leverage the full Security Lifecycle,  from ICT Discovery and Audit to, Co-Managed Service.

We can also support reviews of existing software licences to help organisations maximise the value of their current investment, such as Cisco and Microsoft 365, as well as initiatives like implementing Data Loss Prevention through Purview.

That is the approach that interests us most. Rather than adding another point solution for teams to manage, we see an opportunity to bring our network and security expertise into a broader service that empowers internal teams. We can help organisations assess their current environment, turning technical findings into practical recommendations. Whatever an organisation’s goals may be, ITSUS has the experience to help achieve them.

With that in mind, let’s look at two solutions we have recently explored in more detail through our recent live demonstrations.

ITSUS Demo 1

The Security Lifecycle Review by Palo Alto Networks

Existing Palo Alto Firewall in your Network?

You may not be aware that you have an ‘SLR’ waiting, and immediately at your fingertips, freely available to existing customers (and non-customers, more on this later), to achieve the best out of their existing Next-Generation Firewall. So, what is an SLR and what can it do?

Within your Palo Alto NGFW setting, you can generate a 7-day Security Lifecycle Review (SLR), a customisable, interactive report, produced in HTML and downloadable as a PDF. It draws on Palo Alto’s insight into your network traffic and existing setup, with practical recommendations on where improvements can be made.

Insights from recent demonstrations indicate that the SLR report is often already available within existing Palo Alto environments, though not always widely recognised across teams.

Requiring only a few clicks and minutes to generate and upload to the Palo Alto Partner Hub or Customer Support Portal, the SLR produces a customisable report with valuable findings. Depending on your environment, the SLR can be generated several other ways, including TAP-mode approach, making it accessible to both existing and prospective Palo Alto customers. Get in touch to see our latest demo!

A Security Lifecycle Review (SLR) helps organisations gain deeper visibility into their network environment by identifying traffic trends, application usage, potential risks, and security gaps. By transforming technical data into a clear, actionable report, an SLR enables security teams to better understand what is happening across the network. Running these reports regularly can also support the creation of a security roadmap, helping to improve your score on each report over time.

 This Palo Alto guide provides a brief example of the SLR and what data can be gathered – https://docs.paloaltonetworks.com/best-practices/security-lifecycle-review-getting-started/getting-started/slr-reports

Start unlocking more value from your Palo Alto environment with an SLR today!

ITSUS Demo 2

Keysight’s Threat Simulator, Breach Attack Simulation (BAS)

We would now like to introduce Keysight. Keysight Technologies is a global leader in network testing and security validation, providing solutions that help organisations assess, validate, and improve the effectiveness of their IT and security environments. Keysight’s Threat Simulator a Breach Attack Simulation (BAS) platform takes a more proactive approach by allowing organisations to continuously test how their security controls perform against realistic attack scenarios.

In our live demonstration, we walk through the Breach Attack Simulation platform in detail, including setup, dashboard capabilities, MITRE ATT&CK framework, alignment with the Lockheed Martin Cyber Kill Chain, agent deployments, and a range of simulations, alongside newly released attack scenarios. By using frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK and the Cyber Kill Chain, Keysight’s Breach Attack Simulation enables teams to validate detections, confirm whether protections are working as intended, and identify weaknesses before they can be exploited.

Our live demonstrations have prompted valuable discussion around the benefits of continuous control testing, compared to traditional one-off penetration testing, in providing ongoing assurance and visibility.

Key benefits include:

• • Faster identification of gaps and misconfigurations

• • Improved confidence in defensive coverage

• • Testing against real attack techniques

• • A more effective alternative to relying solely on periodic penetration testing

Summary

Together, these solutions help organisations move from reactive security to a more informed and proactive strategy.

While reporting and assessments like Palo Alto’s SLR provide visibility into the current state of the environment, simulation and continuous testing such as Keysight’s Threat Simulator (BAS) helps confirm whether security controls are effective in practice.

ITSUS Consulting have extensive expertise across a range of technologies, including Palo Alto Networks and Keysight, and can assist with deployment of these as well as training your team.

If you have ideas that you would like to explore, or challenges that you are facing, get in touch to discuss how we can assist you and your team.