Startups and scale-ups are often cloud-first organizations and rarely have extensive legacy on-premise environments. Likewise, knowing the agility and flexibility offered by cloud environments, the midmarket predominantly operates in a hybrid state, partly in the cloud but with some on-premise resources.
While there has been some reversal in the pricing and constraints of using cloud infrastructure, the cloud is still the preferred provider for most SMBs.
As a result, external attack surfaces are increasingly complex and distributed and, therefore, more difficult to monitor and protect. This expanded attack surface gives hackers numerous blind spots and loopholes to exploit. Security teams sit on the sidelines, reacting, often too slowly, to changes in their attack surface while engineering teams continually pivot and expose new systems, services and data to the Internet.
Added to this is the fact that the threat landscape is constantly evolving. Thousands of new vulnerabilities are discovered every month, including vulnerabilities that allow an attacker to gain total control over systems that need to be connected to the Internet and are intended to support security teams or facilitate secure connections (take the wave of Citrix and Ivanti vulnerabilities that have recently surfaced). How can you respond to a critical new vulnerability that is being exploited by ransomware gangs if you don’t even know if your organization uses that technology and exposes it to the Internet?
One of the reasons security teams struggle is because processes are reactive and knowledge of the organization’s attack surface is buried in the heads of those who are putting these cloud systems in place. Security teams rely on a variety of solutions that generate loads of fragmented data that are difficult to understand, prioritize and act on. This is where exposure management comes in as an extension of external attack surface management.
What is exposure management in cybersecurity?
As environments evolve and become more complex, so too do the tools and techniques needed to protect and secure them. Exposure management aims to reduce that complexity by providing visibility into all points within the attack surface that an attacker could use to breach the organization and ultimately pose a risk to the business.
Exposure management aims to provide a prioritized list of exposures, with context for each, so you can make an informed decision about what to address first and how to address it to reduce business risk.
“Organizations that implement a continuous exposure management program will be three times less likely to experience breaches by 2026” (Gartner)
Exposure management can also help increase visibility of your entire attack surface, including data assets such as code repositories like GitHub and GitLab, so you can more precisely spot opportunities for an attacker and close them sooner that pose too great a risk to your business. .
This means you can better understand the risks you face and prioritize attacks that are not just more likely, but more severe. At a time when security teams are overwhelmed with data (over 25,000 vulnerabilities were published in 2022 and we saw an increase to over 26,500 in 2023), having a clear picture of where to focus time and effort is becoming essential.
Exposure management and attack surface management
Although both have the same goal, there are important differences between the two. External Attack Surface Management (ASM) is the continuous process of discovering and identifying assets that can be seen by an attacker on the Internet, showing where security gaps exist, where they can be used to execute an attack, and where defenses are strong enough to repel an attack. If you can look for it using vulnerability scanning, it generally falls under attack surface management.
Exposure management goes a step further to include data assets, user identity, and cloud account configuration, which help you understand your exposure and reduce it where necessary.
In this case the attack surface includes all the SaaS products you use. If one of these gets compromised or one of your accounts in your SaaS provider gets compromised, they have information that can be used to facilitate other attacks. So it should not be forgotten when assessing the risk to the company.
View and minimize your exposure with Intruder
Remember what was said about a large attack surface being harder to defend? You can reduce yours by continuously monitoring changes with an automated vulnerability management tool like Intruder. Gain complete control of your vulnerability management to:
- Discover the resources– When new cloud services are started and exposed to the Internet, Intruder starts a scan for vulnerabilities so it can fix them more quickly
- Find out what’s on display: Gain complete visibility of your network perimeter, track active and unresponsive targets, identify changes, monitor expiring certificates, and view any ports, services, or protocols that should not be exposed to the Internet
- Detect more: The intruder uses multiple scanners to identify vulnerabilities and exposures on the attack surface giving you maximum visibility
- Focus on the big problems: Get results prioritized based on context, so you can focus on the most pressing issues without wasting time sifting through the noise
 |
| The Intruder continuously monitors and automatically scans your environments as new vulnerabilities emerge |
Premium and Vanguard customers can also improve exposure management with bug hunting, where Intruder testers look for weaknesses and exposures that automated scanners may miss. Get started today with a 14-day free trial.