In today’s cybersecurity environment where every business is a target, it’s never been more necessary for companies to reexamine their security posture and look for ways to become more secure. Over the last year, NinjaOne has achieved numerous security milestones, including SOC-2 certification as well as external penetration testing and vulnerability assessments. Now, NinjaOne is developing a new “red team” with a mandate to find gaps and fortify NinjaOne’s armor.
The new red team is directed by NinjaOne CSO Lewis Huynh, a cybersecurity veteran that started his security journey by hacking computers as a kid before moving on to roles at Oracle and cloud security consulting. Lewis brings a multi-disciplinary perspective to security at NinjaOne and has been a key force in strengthening the company’s cloud and software development environments.
“I’ve wanted to develop an internal red team since I first joined NinjaOne,” said Huynh. “Many companies will invest in periodic penetration testing and security assessments, but an internal red team is unique in that they are given the resources and time to actually break into the company. As we’ve worked over the last year to secure our cloud environments and codebase, scaling our security operations to provide round-the-clock exploit analysis is our next major goal.”
A red team — a group of highly specialized security professionals tasked with purposefully hacking into a company — can be extremely effective at finding vulnerabilities and carries advantages that external firms cannot provide. Penetration testing and assessments, while valuable, are snapshots in time, but a red team can devote the time and resources needed to holistically test a codebase and environment for every possible exploit. As employees themselves, NinjaOne’s red team benefits from “insider knowledge” and an understanding of how different parts of the business interact and the tools used by those inside the organization.
“We feel we’ve done a lot to close as many doors as possible, but we know that it’s impossible to close all doors and exploit opportunities,” said Huynh. “As this new program ramps up, I’m hopeful that we find exploits that might have been missed. If we don’t find anything, to me, that’s a false reassurance — there has to be an area that’s been overlooked.”
NinjaOne is currently searching for the right candidates to join its red team, with plans to eventually grow the team to three professionals. For more information and to apply for the role, visit our Careers page.
