Cyberleveling Level 0 - Attacker Point of View and Defender Reality

What Level 0 Actually Is

Level 0 is awareness.

That’s it.

It is not hardening systems.
It is not blocking attacks.
It is not “doing security” in the way people usually imagine it.

Level 0 asks one basic question:

Do we actually know what exists in our environment right now?

Not what used to exist.
Not what is documented.
Not what people assume.

What is actually there today.

Most teams answer this question with confidence. Most teams are wrong.

Why This Matters More Than People Admit

Modern environments change constantly.

New services get spun up.
Old ones never get shut down.
Access is granted temporarily and stays forever.
People leave, tools remain, permissions linger.

None of this is malicious. It is normal.

The problem is that security breaks when change happens quietly and no one tracks it.

That is why Level 0 exists.

Attacker Point of View: How Attacks Really Start

At Level 0, attackers are not hacking.

They are looking.

This part is boring, which is why it works.

Attackers are asking simple questions:

• What exists?
• What looks neglected?
• What seems forgotten?
• What would no one notice right away?

They are not trying to be clever. They are trying to be efficient.

If something exists and no one appears to care about it, that is interesting.

The Kinds of Things Attackers Notice First

Forgotten Things

Systems do not disappear just because people stop thinking about them.

This often includes:

• old services from past projects
• test or staging environments
• integrations no one uses anymore
• access created for short-term needs

Forgotten things are attractive because they usually do not change and no one checks them regularly.

Nothing needs to be broken yet. The value is in the neglect.

Overexposed Things

Exposure does not automatically mean something is insecure.

But attackers do not need insecurity. They need opportunity.

Overexposed things might include:

• publicly reachable services
• wide permissions
• default settings left as-is

Even if nothing is exploitable today, exposure increases future options. That alone is valuable.

Unowned Things

Ownership matters more than people realize.

Attackers pay attention to:

• shared accounts
• resources everyone can access
• systems with no clear owner

If no one owns something, no one is watching it closely. And when something goes wrong, response is slow or confused.

That delay is enough.

Quiet Things

Silence is not safety.

Quiet systems include:

• systems with little or no logging
• access paths that are rarely used
• assumptions like “we would notice”

Attackers are not looking for invisibility. They are looking for time.

Quiet systems give them that.

What Attackers Are Not Doing Yet

This is important.

At Level 0, attackers are not:

• exploiting vulnerabilities
• escalating privileges
• moving laterally
• bypassing detection

They are building a mental map.

That map tells them whether continuing is worth the effort.

Many breaches that feel sudden actually started here, long before anyone noticed.

Defender Reality: Why Level 0 Feels Uncomfortable

From the defender side, Level 0 is awkward.

There is no big win.
No alert blocked.
No clean metric to point at.

Instead, it forces uncomfortable realizations:

• documentation is outdated
• environments have drifted
• access is broader than intended
• confidence is not the same as visibility

Level 0 exposes organizational gaps, not technical ones.

That is why it gets ignored.

What Defenders Learn at Level 0

Teams that take Level 0 seriously tend to learn the same lessons:

• You cannot protect what you do not know exists.
• Surprises are a security failure.
• Inventory is a security control.
• Temporary access becomes permanent unless enforced.

These are not exciting insights. They are foundational ones.

The Actual Goal of Level 0

The goal is not perfect visibility.

The goal is alignment.

Your understanding of the environment should be close enough to reality that nothing important exists completely in the dark.

Level 0 done well looks boring:

• fewer surprises
• fewer “we didn’t know this was still live”
• fewer ownership questions during incidents

Boring is good.

Level 0 Questions Worth Asking

These are not technical steps. They are awareness checks.

• Do we know what systems are publicly reachable?
• Do we know who owns each exposed service?
• Do we know which access was meant to be temporary?
• Do we know what would surprise us if it was abused?
• Do we know what exists outside our core systems?

If these questions are hard to answer, you are at Level 0.

That is normal. Staying there forever is the problem.

Why Level 0 Is Where Breaches Gain Momentum

Most breaches escalate because:

• something existed quietly
• no one reviewed it
• no one noticed when it changed

Attackers do not rely on brilliance. They rely on neglect.

Level 0 removes neglect as an advantage.

Level 0 Is Not Something You Finish

You do not complete Level 0 and move on forever.

Environments evolve.
People leave.
Access drifts.
Systems age.

Level 0 has to be revisited continuously, or you slide backward without noticing.

Security maturity is not about climbing once. It is about not losing awareness over time.

How Level 0 Enables Everything Else

Without Level 0:

• you cannot know what matters
• you cannot reduce blast radius
• you cannot detect incidents properly
• you cannot learn from failures

Every skipped Level 0 check reopens doors you thought were closed.

Takeaway

Attackers do not start by breaking systems.
They start by noticing what no one is paying attention to.

Level 0 does not stop attacks.
It removes the conditions that make attacks easy.

That is where real security begins.