Attack Surface Management
An organization’s attack surface is a vast landscape of Internet-facing digital assets that may be exploited by cybercriminals for entry or data theft. These include hardware, applications, software as a service (SaaS) deployments and cloud resources. They also encompass websites, subdomains, IP addresses, social media accounts and vendors’ infrastructures – all potentially vulnerable to cyberattack.
Many organizations fail to inventory their entire attack surface, leaving gaps in their cybersecurity controls and security posture that attackers can easily exploit. To keep up with the influx of new devices, users and workloads and to protect against cyberattacks, a comprehensive and automated program for attack surface management is necessary.
A human-first, continuous and risk-based approach to attack surface management enables organizations to improve basic security hygiene, reduce dependence on homegrown systems, automate data collection and aggregation processes and remediate gaps either manually or via maximally automated workflows. The burgeoning wave of work-from-home jobs and increased migration to the cloud creates new attack surfaces that need to be protected. Moreover, bad actors use automated reconnaissance tools to probe and analyze external attack surfaces – an evaluation that is often never fully completed.
What is Attack Surface Management?
In order to achieve complete visibility and continuous monitoring of an organization’s attack surface, a cybersecurity solution must provide automated, continuous monitoring of all assets and networks in real time. This helps to identify, prioritize and remediate critical vulnerabilities in real-time and to prevent cyber attacks from taking place. Managing an organization’s attack surface requires continuous and real-time threat intelligence, systems that can spot and stop attacks in their tracks, and processes that enable prioritization so that serious cyber risks issues are eliminated or sharply mitigated quickly.
A strategic approach to attack surface management is essential in helping security teams avoid the most common cyber risks, including network breaches, data loss, unauthorized access and more. In addition to reducing your attack surface, a successful ASM program can help you drive better business outcomes and build trust within your ecosystem.
A comprehensive ASM program integrates all the different security technologies and functionalities you need to reduce your attack surface, manage risk and improve business outcomes. In addition to continuous monitoring of your entire cyber attack surface, you can implement advanced ASM solutions that automate asset discovery and remediation tasks, provide third-party risk insights, and deliver actionable cybersecurity threat intelligence.
The ASM strategy also enables your team to gain better strategic visibility of the potential vulnerabilities, attack vectors and cybersecurity risks that can be found on your surfaces, and to watch over your “human attack surface” for phishing scams and other threatening behaviors. By improving your overall cybersecurity posture, you can establish trust with your customers and strengthen your business relationships and partnerships.
An organization’s attack surface grows every day and new threats emerge daily. Keeping track of these threats and addressing them before they occur is an integral part of any successful cybersecurity strategy.