Traditionally, the prevailing IT security strategy has been to provide extensive perimeter defences via internal networks and firewalls. Threat actors, on the other hand, do not always need to breach the perimeter because externally hosted assets represent low-hanging fruit. Security teams face a significant problem in protecting this external attack surface.
Each company has an external attack surface. This includes all of a company’s internet-facing assets and associated attack vectors that a cyber threat could use to steal sensitive data.
Operating systems, IoT devices, servers, domain names, public cloud services, and security devices are common components of an external attack surface. These assets could be on-premises, in the cloud, or provided by third-party providers.
When it comes to a company’s external attack surface, some of the main challenges include:
- Distributed IT ecosystems
- Siloed teams
- Constantly changing external attack surfaces
These challenges generally leave firms with no visibility into their external attack surface, preventing them from improving their defences.
External attack surface management (EASM) is a cybersecurity strategy that aims to defend a company’s external attack surface (and all of the assets connected with it) from malicious cyber threats.
EASM helps organizations in identifying and managing risks associated with internet-facing assets and systems, allowing them to better uncover threats that are difficult and comprehend their true external attack surface.
External assaults surface management does this by identifying cloud misconfigurations, exposed credentials, shadow IT, software vulnerabilities, and other security flaws that cyber attackers can exploit.
Some companies still rely on vulnerability scanning for baseline EASM, although this is an outdated strategy. Traditional vulnerability assessments provide point-in-time results that quickly expire and fail to provide a true picture of your company’s digital assets, sensitive data, and risks.
When it comes to assessing your company’s total attack surface, relying on this traditional strategy leaves you in the dark.
External attack surface management enables enterprises to discover, manage, and monitor their external perimeter at scale, allowing them to prioritize and remediate the risk of all attack surfaces.
EASM does this through the use of the following technologies and processes:
- Asset discovery: The external attack surface of a corporation cannot be secured until all of its assets are visible. Businesses can utilize a continuous asset and data discovery platform to discover and map unknown external-facing assets.
- Data classification: By creating an accurately classified inventory via automated data categorization, businesses may readily access the assets they manage and prioritize data security measures depending on risk or sensitivity.
- Analysis: Once a company has identified all of its assets, it must assess the risk level of each asset. This assists firms in identifying assets that are most vulnerable to malicious cyber-attacks.
- Prioritization: Once the risk level of each asset has been determined, businesses can prioritize their data security activities to focus on the external attack surface assets that are the most vulnerable.
- Remediation—provides actionable insights for mitigating the prioritized threats and integrating with solutions like ticketing systems, security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) solutions, and incident response tools.
- Finally, defining your company’s attack surface begins with knowing where your data is. Complete data visibility enables a wide range of proactive cybersecurity solutions while virtually eliminating the need for legacy penetration tests and vulnerability assessments.
Emerging technologies such as EASM and CAASM handle the new and complicated use cases that constitute your organization’s attack surface.
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