2025's heavy investment in Cyber Scenarios. Businesses prize providers knowledge, experience and understanding.

This year has already seen a 600% increse in cyber assurance. How? Mainly through sopisticated business led, technical supported scenario testing. But it's not for the faint hearted.

"Ensuring we the have right level of technical protection in place is essential, making sure our people know what to do is critical. Having assurance in challenging demanding 'what if' scenarios is like breathing," says Will Copeland of Copeland Avionics.

"We know we can't critic ourselves well and we need specialist help. There are so many confusing offerings, so we chose Armstrong for their knowledge, experience and understanding. They provided the feedback we needed."

"Finding an experienced provider offered us a broad portfolio of services, ranging from traditional penetration testing to threat intelligence, red team exercises, tabletop simulations, and post-incident reviews" Will continues,

"They brought that accumulated knowledge of working across multiple industries, regulatory environments, and geographies. We needed this type of type of specialism which is hard to find in a sea of pop up organisations who are 'kitbag' specialists with loosely strung together portfolios that regularly broadcast speculatively with a few commissioned sale products they want you to buy".

Now business experienced adversaries, deep technical software developers range across the breath of organized criminal gangs to nation-state actors, all of whom are armed with advanced tools and an ever-growing arsenal of attack techniques. Big rewards attracts big investment and never fail to understand the power of nation state disruption, akin to war.

In response, more businesses than ever are investing in sophisticated cyber testing scenarios — structured exercises designed to test an organisation’s resilience to these modern threats. Today scenarios go far beyond the deployment of simple penetration tool tests or vulnerability scanning. AI can't quite deliver experience either, or also be adaptable to human intelligence. Simulated events that cross ransomware outbreaks, insider data theft, supply chain compromise, or coordinated attacks that mirror multi-pronged and levelled approaches which attackers now deploy in the real world emulate reality. This type of testing provides lessons, remediations, experience and ultimately comfort.

So, why is this type of resilience assurance suddenly sitting at the top of the corporate agenda? The reasons are manifold: rising threat complexity, tightening regulatory environments, the growing expectation of best practice, and increasing demands from clients and partners. Together, these pressures are reshaping the way businesses view their cyber assurance.

Complex Threats Require Complex Testing

Today’s attackers are invested, patient, persistent, and inventive. They use spear-phishing campaigns tailored to specific researched employees, exploit zero-day vulnerabilities before patches are available, leverage and build on legitimate tools within networks that avoid detection. Some use artificial intelligence to adapt attacks in real time. Understanding is being business led.

Sophisticated and clever penetration tests reveal a cacophony of systems issues or outdated software, but they rarely exposes how a determined adversary can chain multiple weaknesses together to achieve their objectives. This is where sophisticated testing scenarios—such as red teaming, purple teaming, and threat-led penetration testing, stand pointing, unified incident management and crisis response come into their own.

These scenarios simulate the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) used by advanced adversaries. Instead of asking, “Can someone get into our system?” they probe deeper: “Can we detect an attacker moving laterally inside our network? How fast can our incident response team identify, contain, and recover from an attack? How does the business continue operating under pressure?”

Without this level of testing, organisations risk discovering their blind spots only during only during a real impact — a mistake that can cost far beyond the limits of reality.

Regulation is Raising the Bar

Governments and regulators have also recognised the danger posed by inadequate cyber resilience and having people skills to respond.

In the financial sector, for instance, frameworks like CBEST (UK), TIBER-EU (Europe), and DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) are making controlled, intelligence-led testing mandatory for certain institutions. The health sector, utilities, and even specific manufacturing are seeing similar regulatory pressures emerge.

Regulators may expect businesses to demonstrate that they can withstand advanced cyberattacks without catastrophic failure, customers demand it. Fines, penalties, and restrictions on operations are real risks for organisations that cannot evidence their resilience.

Even beyond formal regulation, businesses with sensitive supply chains—such as defence, health, areospace or those with critical infrastructure—are finding that rigorous cyber testing is increasingly a prerequisite for securing business, and keeping it. Suppliers must show they can defend themselves, so they can protect theior customers and critical suppy chain, and not just in theory but in practice.

Best Practice is Becoming Business as Usual

It is becoming a fundamental part of how well-run organizations operate. Boards are increasingly recognizing that cybersecurity is not simply an IT function but an enterprise-wide risk management issue that they need to know also.

Stakeholders, from investors to customers, want reassurance that businesses are taking proactive steps to secure their operations. Just as companies are expected to maintain fire safety systems or financial audit trails, sophisticated cyber testing is emerging as a baseline of good governance.

Forward-looking organisations understand that rehearsing for serious and plausble cyber incidents is just as important as planning for other impacts. When disaster strikes, theory is no substitute for knowledge, experience and understanding.

Client and Partner Demands are Driving Change

Trust is the currency of modern business. Clients and partners expect not only that their own data is secure but also that every entity in their supply chain adheres to the same standards. A breach at a single supplier can ripple outward, affecting everyone connected.

As a result, organizations are demanding more of their partners. It is no longer enough to say, “We take cybersecurity seriously.” Businesses are being asked to prove it with evidence—preferably through independent assurance from credible testing providers.

Those who cannot meet this expectation risk losing contracts, damaging long-term relationships, or being shut out of high-value markets.

Why Businesses Turn to Experienced Providers

The growing need for resilience assurance has created a crowded market of cybersecurity consultancies and testing firms. Yet not all providers are created equal. While some have decades of experience, deep sector-specific knowledge, and highly trained staff, others are new entrants with limited capabilities.

Unfortunately, businesses that turn to inexperienced suppliers often pay the price. Sophisticated testing is complex: it requires not only technical expertise but also an understanding of how real-world attackers operate, how organisations function under stress, and how to balance realistic testing with business continuity.

This breadth of perspective allows them to identify not only obvious technical gaps but also subtle organizational weaknesses—such as unclear lines of responsibility or over-reliance on a single detection tool—that less experienced firms might miss.

Lessons from Costly Mistakes

History offers no shortage of cautionary tales where businesses believed they had assurance, only to find their testing provider was out of its depth. This year we have seen some high profile events, of which these are just a few examples:

• Netherlands Investment Manager Missed a Backdoor

  A mid-sized Dutch investment company hired a low-cost provider to conduct a penetration test and business scenario exercise. The report came back clean, giving leadership a false sense of security. In June, attackers exploited a poorly secured third-party remote access tool—a vector the inexperienced testers had failed to examine. The breach exposed sensitive client portfolios and triggered an expensive regulatory investigation.
  

• Global Vehicle Manufacturing Provider didn’t Respond A Japaneese owned global vehicle parts product manufacturer engaged a supplier to run a simulated ransomware attack. The exercise was shallow, focusing only on perimeter defenses. When a real ransomware incident hit, the company’s IT team had no rehearsed procedures for isolating infected systems or communicating with stakeholders. Production lines halted in three countries for eight weeks, costing millions in lost revenue but most importantly stopping client vehicle manifacuring plants.

  
  

• The Healthcare Provider’s Compliance Misstep

  A regional healthcare group selected a consultancy with limited knowledge of sector-specific regulation or production. The firm’s tests overlooked critical data-handling requirements under healthcare privacy laws in the six sigma production system and handshake data exchanges. When auditors later reviewed the provider’s resilience program, they found significant non-compliance. The result was a hefty fine this year by the MHRA and some considerable industry reputational damage that eroded consumer trust.

  
  

In each case, the businesses had attempted to do the right thing by seeking assurance. But their choice of partner undermined the effort, leaving them vulnerable and, ultimately, worse off.

The Future of Cyber Resilience Assurance

The message is clear: sophisticated cyber testing scenarios are simply not optional. They are a necessity for organisations operating at home or across the world where threats are more structured and advanced than ever. Regulators are vigilant, clients are demanding, and reputations can collapse overnight.

To meet this challenge, businesses must partner with providers who have the knowledge, experience, and understanding to deliver meaningful assurance. Cutting corners or relying on inexperienced suppliers may save money in the short term, but the long-term costs of failure can be catastrophic.

As the cyber threat landscape continues to evolve, organizations that invest in rigorous, realistic testing—guided by seasoned experts—will be the ones best equipped to protect their operations, safeguard their stakeholders, and maintain trust in an unforgiving digital age.