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Attack surface management (ASM) is a proactive approach to cybersecurity through which organizations can identify, monitor, and mitigate vulnerabilities across the attack surface that can be exploited by malicious threat actors. An organization's attack surface includes all known and unknown entry points, and continuous monitoring of these entry points is critical to stop cybercriminals from accessing the organization’s IT infrastructure, systems, and data.
On its own, however, ASM is not enough to protect against cyber threats. The discovery, monitoring, and management of both known and unknown assets is an important first step. What’s also needed is real-time cyber threat intelligence (CTI) about activities in the cybercriminal underground that reveals which assets are at the highest risk of an attack. This is particularly true given the ever-expanding threat landscape of the Digital Age, and the urgent needs of resource-constrained security teams to identify the highest priority risks facing their organization and focus their efforts accordingly.
As a standalone solution, CTI arms teams with invaluable information about malicious threat actors, their TTPs, and their targets. However, the amount of data produced by many CTI feeds can be overwhelming. By integrating CTI with ASM, organizations can filter through the vast volume of threat intelligence data and focus on what’s most meaningful to the organization’s unique environment. Combined, ASM and CTI empower security teams to automate the monitoring and discovery of assets to preemptively detect and block threats that are of the most critical importance.
The Cybersixgill advantage
Cybersixgill offers a powerful solution that embeds ASM with its market-leading threat intelligence from the clear, deep, and dark web to accurately correlate discovered vulnerabilities to the likelihood that they’re being exploited by malicious threat actors. The combined solution enables security teams to prioritize their efforts based on the threats and vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk, so they can allocate resources to detection and response activities more efficiently and effectively. Our unique solution incorporates several advanced features and capabilities, including:
Continuous External Asset Discovery – including automated, continuous discovery and mapping of unknown, external-facing assets and systems connected to the organizational network, and visibility into vulnerabilities related to the organization’s supply chain and third parties to prioritize risk exposure.
Asset Inventory Management – providing insight into asset association, location, asset type, WHOIS and DNS context, connected assets, associated CVEs and software, and alerts. Additionally, this feature allows for user-defined asset classification according to business criticality and provides a multi-tenancy application for MSSPs and enterprises managing wholly owned subsidiaries.
Asset Monitoring with Real-Time Threat Intelligence – automating the attribution of potentially high-risk CVEs to affected organizational assets and devices, and the ability to immediately view asset-triggered alerts to potential exposures, categorized according to asset type. Teams can run threat hunting and incident response investigations based on their organization’s specific assets.
While ASM is a critical tool in any organization’s cybersecurity arsenal, it is limited in its ability to identify vulnerabilities across the entire attack surface and the threats posing the most significant risk. By integrating ASM with CTI and gaining the necessary business context and relevance, ASM can help security teams up their game in detecting, remediating, and minimizing risk – and thwarting cybercriminals’ efforts to exploit the organization for financial gain.
To learn more, download our latest eBook, The Modern Attack Surface. Or, visit https://cybersixgill.com/products/attack-surface-management/ for more information about Cybersixgill’s ASM module.
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