NewAI Security Practice — securing the AI systems your business now depends on.

CASA · Internal

Critical Asset Security Assessment

Test the systems that, if breached, would hurt the most. CASA combines configuration review, access analysis, and authenticated exploitation against the crown-jewel applications and data your business depends on.

Not all assets matter equally

Most security testing programs spread effort uniformly across whatever falls inside scope. CASA inverts that — we identify the assets that, if compromised, would cause material financial, regulatory, or operational damage, and we go deep on those. The result is a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than a generic LAN-wide assessment, and findings that align directly with what executives and boards already worry about.

CASA pairs naturally with LANSA (assume-breach internal testing) and BBPen (goal-based adversary simulation). LANSA tells you whether an attacker can reach a crown jewel; CASA tells you what happens once they do.

Methodology

1

Crown-jewel inventory

Workshop with business and IT to identify which systems, if breached, would actually hurt the most. The asset list is the deliverable from this phase — and is often valuable on its own.

2

Threat modeling

STRIDE-style analysis per asset — what can go wrong, who would do it, and how. We surface the attack paths worth testing before we start testing.

3

Configuration & access review

Hardening review against vendor and CIS benchmarks. Privileged access review — who has it, who shouldn't, and how it's actually used.

4

Exploitation & lateral movement

Authenticated and unauthenticated testing. Privilege escalation, lateral movement to and from the asset, abuse of inter-application trust.

5

Data-at-rest exposure

Where the sensitive data actually lives, how it's encrypted (or isn't), and what an attacker with foothold inside the asset can pull out.

6

Reporting & remediation

Per-asset findings tied to specific controls and owners. Prioritized remediation, retesting included.

Typical crown-jewel categories

Financial systems

ERP (SAP, Oracle EBS, NetSuite, Workday Financials), GL, AP/AR, treasury, wire transfer.

Customer data

CRM, customer support tooling, data warehouses, marketing automation, BI.

Source code & IP

Source repos, build infrastructure, artifact registries, signing infrastructure.

Healthcare

EHR/EMR (Epic, Cerner, Athena), PACS imaging, scheduling, billing.

Identity

Active Directory tier-0, IdP (Okta, Azure AD/Entra), PAM vault, secrets manager.

OT / industrial

Historians, HMI, SCADA front-ends, engineering workstations adjacent to ICS.

Techniques

  • Authenticated configuration review (CIS, vendor baselines)
  • Privileged access review and tier-0 mapping
  • Application-layer authentication & authorization testing
  • Privilege escalation (local + application + cloud IAM)
  • Lateral movement testing — to and from the asset
  • Inter-app trust abuse (SSO, service accounts, API keys)
  • Database-layer review (permissions, sensitive data, encryption)
  • Logging & detection coverage assessment

Highlights

  • Crown-jewel asset inventory and prioritization
  • Configuration & access review against vendor + CIS baselines
  • Privilege escalation and lateral-movement testing
  • Data-at-rest exposure analysis
  • Detection & logging coverage validation
  • Per-asset reporting with owner-mapped remediation
  • Free retesting within six months

Ready to start a conversation?

Talk to a senior consultant — we'll scope an engagement that fits your environment.