Dell urges firms to test defenses against data exfiltration campaigns From NIST

Dell is urging organizations to shift from annual to continuous penetration testing, mirroring real-world “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” (HNDL) campaigns to proactively expose vulnerabilities. While many focus on migrating to post-quantum cryptography, the company highlights a critical blind spot: the immediate risk of data harvesting for future decryption. “Every unprotected data flow is a future breach waiting to happen,” warns Ash Lakshmanan. Aggressive patch schedules tied to both exploitability and data sensitivity are now essential to shrink the attack surface and protect against this evolving threat. Aggressive vulnerability management is now essential, driven by the emergence of cybersecurity-focused large language models that have dramatically reduced the time between identifying and exploiting weaknesses. This shift compels organizations to move beyond traditional annual penetration testing schedules, instead adopting a “continuous” approach to pressure-test detection and response systems, exposing blind spots adversaries would exploit. Dell Technologies emphasizes that this proactive stance is critical for…