06-08-2025
Phantom Labs Boosts BeyondTrust's Cyber Research
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BeyondTrust, has announced the official launch of its dedicated cybersecurity research team, BeyondTrust Phantom Labs™.
This move marks a significant milestone in BeyondTrust's mission to enhance identity security and advance threat analysis. Phantom Labs aims to uncover emerging cyber threats, support industry collaboration, and shape global security standards.
The team builds on years of experience in real-world threat analysis, vulnerability disclosures, and identity-focused innovation.
According to BeyondTrust, Phantom Labs will adopt an attacker mindset to reveal how threat actors escalate access and maintain control. The company also revealed that new research leadership and strategic hires will accelerate this effort.
The research team is expected to help defenders proactively detect and disrupt identity exploitation across hybrid and cloud environments.
BeyondTrust's research goals include:• Original threat research and vulnerability discovery• Defender guidance such as mitigation playbooks
• Driving innovation across the BeyondTrust product portfolio
The company reported that Phantom Labs formalizes the work of existing researchers who have helped uncover critical vulnerabilities and contributed to real-world incident response.
One such case involved key intelligence provided to Okta during a high-profile security breach.
Recent research contributions include:• Discovery of stealth privilege escalation risks in Microsoft Entra guest accounts• Development of detection models to identify session hijacking
• Integration of the Paths to Privilege research framework into the BeyondTrust platform
BeyondTrust also continues to collaborate with the Adventures of Alice & Bob podcast to raise awareness about cybersecurity risks.
To strengthen Phantom Labs, the company announced several strategic appointments.
Kinnaird McQuade has joined as Chief Security Architect. He is known for developing Cloudsplaining, a popular open-source tool that supports detection of data exfiltration and privilege escalation in hybrid and cloud environments.
Fletcher Davis has been appointed to lead Phantom Labs. He is a red team expert with deep experience in simulating threat actor behavior and exposing hidden identity risks.
The company's research strategy is overseen by Marc Maiffret, BeyondTrust's Chief Technology Officer. Maiffret is a veteran in cybersecurity and vulnerability research. He helped pioneer the first commercial security research teams more than 25 years ago.
Maiffret stated that traditional PAM solutions often fall short when dealing with complex, cross-domain attack paths. He emphasized that identity security requires a dedicated platform backed by research.
BeyondTrust says it is meeting that challenge with its Pathfinder platform and Phantom Labs, combining purpose-built tools with deep threat analysis to secure identities and access across modern enterprise environments.
