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The ARMOR Model: The Offensive Security Maturity Framework⇱

What Is an Offensive Security Maturity Model?

An offensive security maturity model is a structured way to measure and improve how an organization performs adversarial testing, red teaming, and continuous validation. It defines progressive levels of operational capability, governance, repeatability, and resilience.

ARMOR is the first maturity model designed specifically for offensive security, providing a repeatable and measurable path from basic testing to continuous, intelligence-driven validation.

Offensive Security Today⇱

For many organizations, offensive security remains a snapshot exercise. Penetration tests are conducted annually to satisfy auditors or customers. Red team engagements occur once every year or two, while vulnerability scans identify missing patches and misconfigurations. These efforts drive break-fix remediation processes but rarely deliver insights that meaningfully contribute to operational improvement or resilience.

Reports become static artifacts: vulnerabilities are triaged, remediations tracked, and metrics are centered around isolated, point-in-time responsiveness. What's missing is a sustained feedback loop where offensive results inform detection engineering, risk management, and executive decision-making.

The ARMOR Model addresses these gaps by offering a clear, progressive roadmap from compliance-driven testing to continuous resilience. It defines not just what maturity looks like at various levels, but how to achieve, sustain and grow from one level to the next.

The ARMOR Model is⇱

  • Progressive: Each level builds on the one before it, ensuring maturity is both achievable and sustainable.

  • Practical: Every stage defines outcomes, actions, sustainment criteria, and operational practices so organizations know what maturity looks like and how to achieve it.

  • Universal: Applicable to organizations of any size or sector. Smaller teams can leverage trusted partners; larger enterprises can scale internally.

  • Aspirational: The upper levels are designed to stretch capabilities toward integrated, continuous validation. Few will reach full resilience, but all gain strength by advancing incrementally.

The ARMOR Model Helps Organizations⇱

  • Benchmark their current offensive security maturity.

  • Identify practical actions to advance to the next level.

  • Ensure practices are sustained before moving forward.

  • Connect offensive security directly to business resilience.

Offensive security cannot deliver its full value when reduced to audits and checklists. With ARMOR, organizations gain a roadmap to evolve testing into a continuous discipline that strengthens detection, response, and resilience against modern adversaries.

Where to Begin⇱