Security technology evolves, but so do cybercriminals and threat actors. They are sophisticated and skilled, equipped with advanced toolboxes and knowledge about complex digital systems to conduct fierce attacks. To address these threats, businesses and organisations need to test their defences in a way that mimics reality, not hypotheticals.
Threat Led Penetration Testing (TLPT) is a methodology that simulates real-world adversaries using real-world tactics. Unlike traditional pen testing, TLPT aims to answer a bigger question: Can your organisation withstand a targeted, strategic cyberattack designed to disrupt your most critical services, or will it be demolished with a big bang?
What Is Threat Led Penetration Testing?
TLPT is a form of controlled red teaming that uses threat intelligence-driven scenarios to simulate targeted cyberattacks. Rather than simply identifying vulnerabilities, TLPT assesses how well an organisation can detect, respond to, and recover from realistic attacks that mimic those used by Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs).
TLPT has been appreciated and formalized worldwide. Frameworks like the TIBER-EU, the CBEST in the UK, the iCAST in Hong Kong, and the CORIE in Australia guide how threat actors’ behaviours are emulated, aligning with real intelligence to ensure each test is highly contextualized and impactful.
How Does It Work?
TLPT is a form of controlled red teaming that uses threat intelligence-driven scenarios to simulate targeted cyberattacks. Rather than simply identifying vulnerabilities, TLPT assesses how well an organisation can detect, respond to, and recover from realistic attacks that mimic those used by Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs).
TLPT has been appreciated and formalized worldwide. Frameworks like the TIBER-EU, the CBEST in the UK, the iCAST in Hong Kong, and the CORIE in Australia guide how threat actors’ behaviours are emulated, aligning with real intelligence to ensure each test is highly contextualized and impactful.
How Does It Work?
The TLPT lifecycle is structured but highly adaptive:
- Scoping and Intelligence Gathering: The process begins with a collaborative scoping exercise, identifying critical business services and associated crown jewel assets. Threat intelligence teams then map out threat actors likely to target the organisation, considering motivations, tools, and known TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures).
- Threat Scenario Design: Based on the intelligence gathered, custom threat scenarios are developed. These are tailored to reflect industry-specific risks and attack vectors relevant to the organisation’s threat landscape.
- Red Teaming: A skilled Red Team executes the simulated attack, using stealth, persistence, and creativity to bypass controls, just like a real adversary. The goal is to assess the organisation’s ability to detect and respond.
- Blue Team Monitoring: The internal security team (Blue Team) is typically unaware of the test. Their reactions are observed and recorded, providing insight into detection gaps, escalation procedures, and incident response efficacy.
- Reporting and Feedback: After the test, a detailed report outlines the attackers’ paths, the controls bypassed, the time to detect and respond, and recommendations for resilience.
Often, the exercise includes a Purple Team debrief, a collaborative knowledge-sharing between the Red and Blue teams.
Why Does TLPT Matter?
Today, compliance checklists and even traditional penetration tests — while valuable and often focused on critical assets — are not always sufficient to assess real-world cyber resilience. TLPT takes it a step further by emulating the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of real adversaries tailored to your sector and threat landscape.
Unlike standard testing approaches, TLPT is threat intelligence-driven, highly contextual, and aligned with regulatory expectations, particularly in sectors like finance and critical infrastructure, where central banks and supervisory authorities mandate such rigorous testing.
Moreover, TLPT supports compliance with broader cybersecurity regulations. Under the EU’s NIS2 Directive, there’s an emphasis on risk-based, sector-specific testing for operators of essential services. The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) mandates threat-led testing in the financial sector to ensure digital resilience. Even the GDPR recognizes the importance of demonstrable security measures, encouraging organisations to adopt advanced testing as part of their data protection strategies.
Benefits of TLPT
TLPT’s benefits include realistic risk assessment, posture validation under crisis, board-level visibility, and insights for prioritized investment.
Imagine knowing exactly how an attacker would try to breach your systems—not guessing, but seeing it unfold step by step. Now, picture your team catching that attack in real time, triggering a response plan that actually works because it was tested under pressure. That’s not a hypothetical; that’s TLPT in action.
TLPT gives you more than a list of vulnerabilities; it shows you the ripple effect of a breach, from the first foothold to potential business impact. It reveals how your people, your tools, and your processes perform. You get insights that speak the language of risk, not just logs and alerts, which are perfect for getting buy-in from leadership. And best of all? You finally know where to focus your time, money, and energy to get the best return on your security investments. Not everywhere, just where it counts.
TLPT Considerations
No methodology is without its trade-offs. TLPT can be:
- Costly: Full TLPT engagement can be resource-intensive, time-consuming, and require cooperation across departments.
- Risky: Although controlled, TLPT activities could affect business operations if not carefully managed.
- Sensitive to Quality: TLPT depends on threat intelligence and human quality. Red Teams must be vetted for professionalism, discretion, and technical excellence. If the threat model is wrong, the simulation will be ineffective: TLPT is not smart by itself; it follows the garbage-in, garbage-out
To address these challenges, many organisations work with specialized security partners who follow formalized, threat-led testing frameworks and offer tested methodologies aligned with regulations.
Industry Momentum
TLPT has gained substantial traction in heavily regulated sectors, with the financial industry leading the charge. Across the EU, central banks have widely adopted TIBER-EU to enforce similar standards, embedding threat-led testing into the cyber resilience strategies of national and cross-border financial entities. In the UK, the CBEST framework is mandatory for systemically important financial institutions.
Beyond finance, critical infrastructure sectors such as energy and telecommunications embrace TLPT as part of broader cyber risk management efforts. Driven partly by NIS2 compliance and growing awareness of operational vulnerabilities, these industries integrate threat-led exercises into national cyber resilience initiatives to assess and strengthen their security posture.
The momentum of the TLPT is building everywhere in the private sector. Forward-thinking enterprises, recognizing its value in preparing for ransomware, supply chain attacks, or insider threats, are incorporating TLPT into their internal security programs.
Are you thinking of adopting TLPT?
TLPT is a strategic investment in cyber readiness. It gives organisations a clear view of their ability to detect and survive real-world attacks. As regulators raise the bar and adversaries grow smarter, TLPT offers a path beyond compliance to resilience.
If your organisation is considering a TLPT initiative, it is vital to work with a threat intelligence-driven team. Schedule a call with TwelveSec’s experts to discuss how TLPT can benefit your organisation and craft a tailored approach to address your unique business needs.