If you’re in IT or cybersecurity, you already know that mitigating newly discovered vulnerabilities and increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks are simply part of life now. Because of this, traditional approaches to cybersecurity are no longer enough. This is why Zero Trust, as a strategy, is such a popular modern approach to cybersecurity. To effectively protect your organization, you need to take a more holistic approach to security. In that same vein, “exposure management” has developed as a new way of managing your attack surface, including vulnerabilities, and reducing your risk.
Exposure management arrived on the cyber scene a few years ago and has been gaining a lot of traction as a more comprehensive cybersecurity approach. Exposure management focuses on understanding and managing your organization’s overall exposure to risk. It takes into account all of the factors that contribute to your risk, including vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and even the behavior of your employees. In this blog post, we’ll discuss why you should consider shifting to an exposure management strategy. We also dive into “continuous threat exposure management,” which is a process defined Gartner® that you can use to implement an exposure management strategy.
What Is Exposure Management?
At the Gartner Security & Risk Management 2024 conference, Gartner analyst Pete Shoard, defined exposure management as “a set of processes that give enterprises the awareness to continually and consistently evaluate the visibility, accessibility, and vulnerability of digital assets.” In other words, exposure management is about understanding what assets you have, how they are vulnerable, and how attackers could exploit those vulnerabilities.
Traditional methods of addressing individual vulnerabilities fall short when faced with the complex landscape of interconnected systems and applications. When coupled with the fact that security misconfigurations often serve as low-hanging fruit for malicious cyber actors, the idea that focusing more broadly on exposures to an organization means these risks might be able to be identified and mitigated before being exploited. By adopting this holistic approach, organizations can more effectively identify, prioritize, and address potential threats before they manifest into full-blown attacks.
Why Exposure Management?
The need for exposure management has never been more critical than it is now due to the escalating number of vulnerabilities and security misconfigurations that plague modern enterprises. Digital transformations and technology innovations have resulted in an increase in potential attack vectors, making it even more important for organizations to adopt a wider view of their environments and respective cybersecurity efforts.
There are many benefits to adopting an exposure management approach. By understanding your overall exposure to risk, you can better prioritize your security efforts. You can also identify and mitigate threats more effectively. And you can improve communication and collaboration between your security and IT teams.
What Is Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)?
While exposure management sounds like a more holistic strategy, how do you actually implement it? That’s where Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) comes in. CTEM is a framework developed by Gartner for implementing exposure management. It is a five-phase process that includes scoping, discovery, prioritization, validation, and mobilization.
- Scoping: Identifying the assets that are most important to your business and the threats that are most likely to affect them.
- Discovery: Identifying the vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in your assets.
- Prioritization: Prioritizing the risks based on their potential impact and likelihood of exploitation.
- Validation: Validating the risks by testing them to see if they can be exploited.
- Mobilization: Taking action to mitigate the risks.
Most importantly, according to Gartner, CTEM is an ongoing process. As new threats emerge and your assets change, you need to continuously reassess your exposure to risk. By adopting a CTEM approach, your security program can responsive to changes in your environment, ensuring your program is up-to-date and effective.
Where Do Vulnerability Management and Patch Management Fit In?
Vulnerability management and patch management are important components of exposure management. Vulnerability management focuses on identifying vulnerabilities and, hopefully, quantifying those vulnerabilities into risk. Patch management is the process of applying patches to fix those vulnerabilities.
However, exposure management takes a broader view. It considers all of the factors that contribute to an organization’s overall exposure to risk, including unpatchable vulnerabilities. For example, even if you patch all of the vulnerabilities in your software, you may have certain ports open to the Internet for business reasons. With a CTEM process, you could implement additional security controls around that service to reduce your risk. This could also include additional monitoring, logging, and alerting to ensure it does not become an initial access vector.
Vulnerability Remediation: A Crucial Step
Remediation is the process of fixing or mitigating identified vulnerabilities to reduce risk. Most vulnerability management programs do not include remediation. Traditional remediation focuses primarily on patching, but CTEM expands this concept. It can include patching, implementing compensating controls, improving monitoring and detection, or documenting acceptance of the risk if the cost of remediation outweighs the potential impact.
What Next?
Exposure management is an evolving approach to cybersecurity, and CTEM is just beginning to gain traction across traditional vulnerability management programs. Because CTEM is a more holistic and effective way to manage risk than traditional vulnerability management, organizations that adopt exposure management will be better positioned to protect themselves from cyberattacks.
If you’re looking for a way to improve your organization’s security posture, consider learning more about exposure management. Here are some useful items to check out:
- Gartner: Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends 2024
- Gartner: Comprehensive Protection Strategies Against Cyber Threats
- Gartner: Top Cybersecurity Trends and Strategies for Securing the Future
If your organization needs help identifying, prioritizing, and remediating vulnerabilities across your enterprise, Syxsense can help. Contact us today to see how we’re helping enterprises reduce their risk and close their attack surface.
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