With new buzzwords being generated on a seemingly constant basis, it can be difficult to distinguish between passing fads and emerging trends.
                                      
Especially when industry conferences shifted online during Covid, cybersecurity professionals have begun to drift apart and sometimes struggle to keep tabs on industry developments.

One such development is the rapid emergence, over the past 24 months, of a new segment of cybersecurity tools and practices called Attack Surface Management (or ASM).

Introducing Attack Surface Management
Your attack surface is the sum of every attack vector that can be used to breach your perimeter defenses. In other words, it is the total quantity of information you are exposing to the outside world. Think of this as your digital footprint.

According to a recent Gartner survey, over 75% of organizations lack a clear inventory of their public-facing assets, leading them to simply leave much of their attack surface unprotected.

Typically, the larger the attack surface, the more opportunities hackers will have to find a weak link which they can then exploit to breach your network. And, as companies continue to integrate SaaS applications and cloud computing into their network, the attack surface can grow quite large. This puts them and their customers at a distinct risk of being exposed to a vast array of security threats.

The key to effective attack surface management, then, is to reduce your attack surface as much as possible, without compromising other business functions in the process, and then to continuously monitor the remaining exposure. Here's how.

Reducing Your Attack Surface

1. Identify and prioritize all of your internet-facing assets. For smaller companies this can be done manually, but typically an attack surface management tool can be used for this. For example, Silent Breach's Quantum Armor is a free agentless tool that can be set up in a matter of minutes, and will run automatically identify and prioritize your exposure.

2. Determine what level of risk your current level of exposure brings with it. Again, this can be assigned manually, but Quantum Armor will provide this for you automatically. Once we've identified your total exposure, we'll assign a holistic risk rating to your current network. This will serve as your baseline.

3. Access the latest threat intelligence to help you distribute the risk ratings accurately. Quantum Armor has a built-in Threat Intelligence engine which automatically correlates your personal exposure to events occurring both in the real world and on the dark web.

4. Continuously monitor the remaining attack surface. With Quantum Armor, your network will be tracked around the clock, and any suspicious activity will be reported immediately. For example, tracking the changes in your attack surface can help your IT team determine if a backdoor has suddenly appeared on your network or if the firewall has been misconfigured.

Conclusion

An often-heard truism in cybersecurity is that “you can't protect what you can't see.” And, as record-breaking cyber attacks continue to fill the headlines, Attack Surface Management will be critical in helping companies ‘see' more clearly and stay protected.


Talk with one of our representatives today to learn more about how we can help improve your security. For a limited time, Quantum Armor licenses are being offered completely free of charge so that you can test-drive our platform 100% risk-free!


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About Silent Breach: Silent Breach is an award-winning provider of cyber security services. Our global team provides cutting-edge insights and expertise across the Data Center, Enterprise, SME, Retail, Government, Finance, Education, Automotive, Hospitality, Healthcare and IoT industries.