The Shift from Periodic Checks to Continuous Security
Continuous security validation is a must-have in 2025. Organisations can no longer rely on annual penetration tests or quarterly vulnerability scans. Attackers are probing 24/7, which means defences tested only periodically leave blind spots. Even industry data shows a shift from infrequent, compliance-driven tests to continuous, evidence-based attack validation. To stay ahead of adversaries, you need to test your systems as constantly as attackers do – and do so proactively on your own terms.
This is where autonomous ethical hacking comes into play. Rather than a one-off engagement, autonomous ethical hacking provides ongoing, automated assaults on your assets (by friendly forces) to expose vulnerabilities in real time.
For every organisation, there’s a growing need for ongoing, proactive measures rather than periodic assessments to keep security one step ahead of attackers. Continuous testing ensures that new weaknesses from code changes, configuration drift, or emerging threats are caught early – not months after they’ve been quietly lurking.
AI Hackbots + Human Ingenuity = Ethiack’s Hybrid Edge
Ethiack was founded by André Baptista and Jorge Monteiro with a shared vision to make the digital environment safer. Ethiack is a pioneer in this space, blending the speed and scale of AI-based hackbots with the creativity and expertise of human ethical hackers. Ethiack’s intelligent automated attackers (“hackbots”) continuously probe all of your environments – external and internal, known and unknown – for weaknesses. These AI agents mimic real attacker techniques and even the workflow of a skilled security researcher, far beyond what a basic scanner can do.
Ethiack doesn’t rely on AI alone. The platform keeps humans in the loop: when automated tests flag a complex or critical scenario, Ethiack’s pool of top-tier hackers steps in to validate and dig deeper. This hybrid model ensures that even subtle, logic-based flaws are caught, while the routine breadth of coverage is handled at machine speed. The outcome is continuous testing with negligible noise (under 0.5% false positives) and a high hit rate of serious findings (over 20% of all discoveries). In short, machine-scale coverage plus human insight means a massively narrowed attack surface.
Ethiack’s philosophy is that AI is an accelerator, not a replacement, for human creativity. Co-founder Jorge Monteiro notes that their hackbot tech mimics a researcher’s process and “will make traditional scanning tools obsolete”, even as AI will not replace the creativity of human hackers. In practice, the AI covers the breadth while humans tackle the depth, bridging the gap between noisy automated tools and limited-scope manual tests.
Seeing the Unseen: Visualizing Your Full Attack Surface
Another game-changer in Ethiack’s arsenal is the visualizer – a tool that makes your entire attack surface visible and interactive. You can’t secure what you don’t know about, and visualizer solves that by providing a graph map of all assets affecting your organization, including those of third-party suppliers. If you don’t even know an asset exists, you can’t test it – visualizer ensures those hidden corners come to light.
This graph-based view goes beyond static asset lists offered by typical attack surface management tools. Instead of combing through spreadsheets of domains and IPs, your team can see context and relationships at a glance, illustrating context that spreadsheets miss – for example, you might instantly visualize that a seemingly minor exposed database on a supplier’s network has a direct API connection into your core platform – turning a third-party flaw into a direct risk to you.
Visualizer also shines a light on third-party risk.
Vendor and supplier assets appear on the map as first-class elements, not afterthoughts. This directly supports new regulations like DORA and NIS2 that demand oversight of ICT supply chain security. Monitoring a partner’s security weaknesses just as you do your own means you can catch a partner’s misconfiguration or exposed server before it becomes your problem.
Ethiack vs. Hadrian, CovertSwarm, and Horizon3
Autonomous ethical hacking is a growing field, and a few notable players offer different approaches. Hadrian markets an “AI-driven red teaming” platform that blends automation with human expertise. Horizon3 offers an autonomous penetration testing tool (NodeZero) that organizations deploy internally to continuously validate their defences. CovertSwarm, by contrast, provides a human-driven continuous red team as-a-service – effectively a subscription to a live team of hackers testing your systems non-stop.
Ethiack distinguishes itself by delivering the best of all worlds in one unified platform. Like Hadrian and Horizon3, it uses automation for speed and scale – but unlike a purely automated solution, Ethiack embeds human expertise from day one, not as an optional add-on. Common vulnerabilities and misconfigurations are efficiently discovered by AI, and the tricky, context-dependent flaws are quickly picked up by expert human eyes. Conversely, compared to a fully manual service like CovertSwarm, Ethiack’s hackbots ensure that no corner of your expanding attack surface is left untested (even at 3 AM). The result is full coverage with depth that neither machines-alone nor humans-alone could achieve as effectively.
Another key differentiator is the focus on validated risk versus raw vulnerability counts. Traditional exposure management tools (like Tenable’s vulnerability management suites) might dump thousands of findings but offer little guidance on what to tackle first. Ethiack instead provides verified, actionable insights. It won’t just tell you that you have 500 vulnerabilities – it will show you which ones are actually exploitable and how to fix them. Rather than an overwhelming spreadsheet of CVEs, you get a clear attacker-oriented fix list. This means your security team can concentrate on truly critical issues, instead of wading through false positives or minor informational alerts.
Driving Compliance for UK Organisations
For UK organisations in regulated sectors, Ethiack’s model aligns with new compliance expectations. Regulations such as the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and the updated NIS2 directive emphasize continuous testing, effective vulnerability management, and third-party risk oversight. Ethiack’s continuous penetration testing and detailed reporting help demonstrate that these bases are covered. It essentially provides an ongoing record of security validation: instead of an annual test report for auditors, you have continuous evidence of proactive risk discovery and mitigation.
Getting hacked by the right people might be the smartest defence.
Ethiack embodies this philosophy by safely simulating real attacks on your behalf – combining relentless AI automation with savvy human oversight – so that vulnerabilities are uncovered and fixed before criminals can exploit them. This bold, proactive stance shifts the balance of power: rather than waiting for the next incident, you’re always one step ahead, continuously hardening your defences.
It's quite a contrast to traditional scanners or annual pen-tests, and it yields a more resilient, compliant organisation. Don’t wait for a breach to reveal your blind spots. After all, getting hacked by the right people is the best way to detect vulnerabilities and narrow down your attack surface. With autonomous ethical hacking from Ethiack, you can continually narrow your attack surface and turn cybersecurity into a game of offence-as-defence – proving that sometimes the best defence is a good (ethical) offence.
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