Understanding the Evolving Cyber Threat Landscape with External Attack Surface Management (EASM)

By
Rob Kraus
,
Vice President, Security Services
Contents

The digital transformation era has brought about numerous advantages for businesses. Still, with this rapid expansion, the threat landscape for cyber-attacks has widened. The widespread adoption of cloud technologies is at the heart of this transformation, leading to a more dynamic IT landscape. Here lies a unique challenge: managing and securing assets across diverse cloud providers.

EASM offers a methodical strategy to detect, evaluate, and manage potential cyber vulnerabilities across an organization's digital footprint. It identifies potential entry points for cyber adversaries, allowing companies to address weak spots proactively, ensuring resilience against cyber threats.

For an EASM solution to be effective, it should offer capabilities ranging from discovery and identification of assets and vulnerabilities to mitigation suggestions. Over the past two decades, the landscape of vulnerability reporting has evolved massively, largely thanks to the cybersecurity community's growth. Recent findings suggest a notable increase in vulnerabilities, underscoring the need for evolving security measures. Both security professionals and malicious actors will likely exploit emerging AI capabilities, potentially leading to more, previously undisclosed vulnerabilities. Newly reported vulnerabilities are expected to exceed 28,000 with approximately 9.8% of them being classified as “critical severity.”

While threats grow, the silver lining is the rise of proactive security monitoring capabilities. Evolve Security has noticed a shift in purchasing behaviors from our clients, indicating a tilt towards continuous testing, real-time reporting, and seamless integration with ticketing systems. As a result, the gap between vulnerability detection (MTTI) and remediation (MTTR) is reducing.

Organizations that adopt a EASM solution will enjoy many of its benefits. From avoiding regulatory fines to minimizing downtime and safeguarding brand reputation, EASM offers an array of financial benefits. By integrating penetration testing into the EASM framework and meeting cyber insurance requirements, companies ensure a more dynamic security posture and potentially better insurance terms.

In conclusion, organizations need to evolve beyond periodic assessments to counter the fast-paced vulnerability discovery and exploitation. By integrating EASM solutions, companies can identify and address vulnerabilities swiftly, ensuring they aren't left behind.

Dive deeper into how our EASM solution can fortify your company's defenses and offer tailor-made security strategies. Explore this link for comprehensive insights into Evolve Security's EASM Solution and understand how we can be instrumental in safeguarding your enterprise. For a more detailed exploration, download our whitepaper.

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