From legacy systems to cloud deployments, shadow IT, and third-party dependencies, the sheer breadth of this surface poses a significant security challenge.
The Attack Surface Management (ASM) tools are a powerful solutions that provide visibility into this newer and more capable threats, allowing organizations to proactively identify and remediate exposures before they are exploited.
The Expanding Attack Surface: Why ASM is Essential?
The traditional security perimeter has long dissolved. Today, organizations rely on a complex web of technologies, often spread across multiple environments and managed by diverse teams. This reality contributes to a dynamically growing attack surface:
- Cloud Migrations: Public cloud adoption introduces new complexities and potential vulnerabilities beyond traditional on-premises security.
- Shadow IT: Applications and services deployed without proper IT oversight increase the attack surface without adequate control or visibility.
- Supply Chain Risks: Security weaknesses within partner and third-party systems can be leveraged to compromise a primary organization.
- Remote Work: An increase in remote workers with access to organizational resources from potentially less secure networks introduces further attack vectors.
- Emerging Technologies: Adoption of IoT devices and newer tech such as Kubernetes add further potential exploitable weakpoints.
- Rapid Digital Transformation: Rapid change and digital transformation leaves behind blind spots within system environment due to inadequate monitoring.
This expanding attack surface dramatically elevates risk, making it almost impossible to effectively protect using traditional security approaches alone. Without comprehensive visibility and constant monitoring, organizations struggle to identify critical exposures.
ASM tools directly address this challenge by providing an automated way to continuously discover and map assets, evaluate vulnerabilities, and proactively address potential weaknesses.
How Attack Surface Management Tools Work?
ASM tools employ various scanning techniques and intelligence-gathering methods to uncover potential security vulnerabilities. These tools typically work through a phased approach:
1. Discovery & Asset Inventory:
This initial step involves actively probing the organization’s external-facing infrastructure. It can involve both agentless scanning of external ports and ranges of IP’s and also API connections into internal clouds or internal system integrations to allow mapping and asset catalog creation. ASM tools achieve this in a variety of ways:
- Port Scans: Identifying open ports on internet-facing devices and servers that can expose applications.
- DNS Probes: Investigating domains and subdomains registered to the organization that might not be known to security teams.
- Certificate Analysis: Identifying expired or misconfigured SSL/TLS certificates which can introduce potential risks for secure transmission.
- Cloud Instance and Inventory Tracking: Continuously identifying instances across multiple public cloud providers or cloud solutions such as software-as-a-service (SaaS)
Through this process a live inventory is created showing all the identified potential infrastructure and assets which constitutes part of your attack surface.
2. Vulnerability Assessment & Exposure Analysis:
Once the infrastructure assets are identified the ASM system evaluates risks to your attack surface and provides reports. This process involves both known-vulnerabilities identification using external database lookups, and automated assessments using tooling such as penetration testing or website spidering to evaluate performance. Common areas looked at are:
- Known Vulnerabilities: Comparing the discovered asset data against various databases like CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) to pinpoint potential weaknesses and known exploits in associated products or solutions.
- Configuration Errors: Flagging misconfigurations such as incorrectly implemented settings in databases, server operating systems, network firewalls and more which could present an attacker entry.
- Weak Authentication: identifying open endpoints with poor login and security protocols in place, and potentially compromised user accounts.
- Data Leakage: Identifying if data might have been disclosed on various data repository websites such as PasteBin, Github or dark web resources.
- Shadow IT: Detecting unknown applications and shadow IT usage, giving additional understanding for where business and critical business applications may sit and helping with further system investigation if risk scores deem these important.
- Website security issues – Issues related to cookies, scripting security or out of date library or code usage.
This step results in prioritization of the most serious issues within the organisation’s attack surface.
3. Continuous Monitoring & Alerting:
ASM tools go beyond one-off scans by offering continuous monitoring and alert system which informs of newly added items to the environment or any changes and exposures to systems. Key elements of this system are:
- Real-Time Scanning: Maintaining an up-to-date understanding of external environment via continuous or periodical scans, alerting to newly found elements.
- Automated Alerts: Notifying security teams to changes in risk or the discovery of any exposed systems that may lead to a data breach.
- Historical Data Analysis: Offering reports based on past data of exposure of risk to assist in further evaluation and mitigation processes
These functions allow a continuous and accurate analysis of the total external footprint for the business
4. Reporting & Remediation Guidance:
Finally, these ASM tools provides clear and concise reports which can be actioned and prioritised. Key reporting features include:
- Prioritized Findings: Ranking issues according to their severity level. Highlighting most likely exploitation pathways
- Clear and Easy To Understand Reports: Allowing for ease of reading from technical and managerial stakeholders for reporting progress
- Remediation Steps: Providing actionable recommendations to mitigate risks. Helping close exposures which may be used to gain internal access.
Benefits of Implementing Attack Surface Management Tools
The advantages of incorporating ASM tools into an organization’s security strategy are considerable and span the areas of security effectiveness, risk reduction and compliance.
Enhanced Visibility
With complete and automatic asset catalog, ASM tools provide clear sight across digital landscapes and reduce gaps in technology ownership knowledge for entire organisations.
Proactive Risk Reduction
Proactive approach from automated system offers continuous detection and mitigation which dramatically reduces risk to cyber threats and protects systems proactively with improved security configuration settings, instead of only reactive systems which operate on a detection and response framework only.
Faster Incident Response
With accurate identification and mapping, understanding how incidents started helps incident response teams move faster for investigation of causes and pathways within environments. These platform systems are vital for rapid response from teams.
Improved Compliance
Ability to automatically find infrastructure risk assists organisations to quickly resolve risks relating to compliance and external auditing frameworks.
The additional information from a live monitoring system vastly increases speed of achieving compliances as documentation can be found directly through platforms, or from live asset mapping and analysis
Streamlined Security Operations
With focused alerting and remediation guidance, the entire security process workflow and team workload efficiency is vastly increased due to reduction of time to perform research into high risk vulnerabilities, with focus primarily given to top prioritised risks rather than wasting resources to chase potentially benign alerts
Reduced Shadow IT Risks
Unsanctioned IT assets represent a key area of unmonitored risk for any organisation, as security systems cannot secure items if they are unknown and unplanned for, or missed.
ASM tool platforms provide quick access to infrastructure and assist organisations manage shadow-IT concerns by finding resources before risk to the business is greatly impacted.
Effective Mergers and Acquisitions
Any M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) are improved vastly by use of ASM, by automatically mapping new system environments of other business areas rapidly.
These automatic monitoring systems and tool ensure fast analysis of integrations. The additional overview of all integration concerns enables more efficient, accurate and overall far more secure implementations and project delivery.
Reduced Security Blind Spots
Finally these systems identify areas not in system overview, allowing for all-inclusive overview on current IT estate of infrastructure within a live automated management platform, resulting in a dramatically improved IT security posture.
Key Considerations When Choosing an ASM Tool
Selecting the appropriate ASM solution requires careful evaluation of vendor products and their applicability to business systems and security practices
Discovery Capabilities
Assess discovery tools and options from system with understanding of its ability to accurately map the technology within complex environment. Accuracy of automated mapping is a primary consideration of technology capabilities, before the tool’s evaluation for further functionality in analysis.
Scanning Depth and Breadth
The variety and level of detailed scanning assessment features such as database vulnerabilities, service checks and code evaluations, need be sufficient to properly secure modern complex technology environment needs with enough detail provided by reporting options for the security staff. The levels of analysis across all platforms is critical in overall technology evaluation for risk management
Reporting Clarity and Flexibility
Any technology selection requires a well-documented, informative dashboard platform, flexible across technical and managerial roles, offering both a general business or highly detailed report, which may assist for wider business stakeholder and staff members who do not operate security controls actively.
Integration Capabilities
Analysis must assess API connection for the SIEM platform currently in place. Integrations within security incident or response platforms provide fast response workflows. Selection must incorporate this into product capability evaluations.
Alerting Accuracy and Speed
Testing alert times and false positives should be evaluated, fast alerts with reduced or minimal false positive risks allow accurate understanding for incident response processes
Scalability
The total product should offer future proofing with system growth options. Analysis and evaluations should take scale needs into full consideration during testing and proof-of-concepts periods, to future-proof risk assessment capabilities across all business divisions and requirements
User-Friendliness and Onboarding
Technology selection must provide ease of use for team, to enable speed of training with system onboarding without long lengthy product evaluations. System selection needs to be intuitive
Cost & Pricing Models
Evaluate and compare overall costs and operational expenses which includes overall support required when planning platform selection or upgrade and evaluate the business impact carefully across multiple purchasing and renewal costs from each offering to ensure suitable selections
Level of Customer Service
Evaluate product vendors on product training support offered and all supporting technical material provided by vendors for long-term use after product selection, alongside any ongoing product feature developments, enhancements, maintenance schedules for existing and upcoming platform implementations, in order for smooth ongoing integration
How Cortex Xpanse in Different from other ASMs?
Xpanse automatically maps an organization’s entire external estate, including uncatalogued and hidden assets, to provide a comprehensive risk overview.
This reduces incident response times by identifying the attack surface across various systems and includes live automated reports for high-risk prioritization. Continuous monitoring and alerting on discovered risks improve visibility and protection for businesses with complex environments or third-party solutions.
Palo Alto Networks Cortex Xpanse: An Example of a Powerful ASM Solution
Palo Alto’s Cortex Xpanse stands out as a powerful and highly capable Attack Surface Management platform. Its primary goal is to assist organizations to reduce external exposure by continually mapping their dynamic attack surface.
It leverages automation to expose any blind spots for an organisation in real time and highlights priority areas for patching or issue remediation. Key features of Cortex Xpanse include:
- Comprehensive Asset Discovery: Xpanse utilizes the internet’s full capabilities to discover known, unknown and previously forgotten resources, through API connections and passive discovery of connected networks to organisations or its subsidiaries
- Risk Prioritization: The system prioritises risk effectively, by comparing risk and business importance, offering reporting and action on critical findings first.
- Exposure Analysis: Continually analysing discovered services and resources to alert on real time changes and to expose any vulnerabilities which can assist a threat actor in gaining entry to systems.
- Automated Attack Surface Monitoring: Automatic system alerts provides speed of action to security professionals on emerging risks as soon as they arise
- Cloud Integration: Connectors can be provided which link directly to Azure, AWS, or other solutions, assisting in internal infrastructure overview and management alongside any externally facing infrastructure
- Third-party Risk Monitoring Integrations for evaluation of risks on vendors and third parties
- Integrations: The ability to connect to other tools like Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) or other platforms for reporting provides improved information analysis.
- External Threat intelligence – System also analyses external dark-web and darknet threats assisting to map threat risks to assets owned by organisation
Bottom Line
ASM Tools like Palo Alto Networks Cortex Xpanse represent an essential investment for modern businesses in strengthening and safeguarding their security posture. By enhancing the visibility of dynamic, expansive attack surfaces these ASM platforms drastically mitigate attack exposure risk by continuous monitoring and prioritisation, drastically reducing breach time, assisting to achieve legal and security compliances as well as allowing peace of mind knowing that all infrastructure elements and services are secure from possible threats.
Organizations that integrate effective attack surface management programs improve business security posture significantly with a strong understanding of total asset visibility for all aspects of a modern evolving environment.