Exposure Management

Exposure Management (EM)

Exposure management (EM) is a program based upon a set of processes and capabilities that allow enterprises to evaluate the visibility, accessibility, and vulnerability of their digital assets continually and consistently. 

EM is delivered using five stages: scoping, discovery, prioritization, validation, and mobilization. An EM program leverages tools to inventory assets and vulnerabilities, simulate or test attacks, and other forms of security assessment process and technologies. 

Security professionals responsible for managing risk have traditionally looked at vulnerability scanning and security controls to identify the level of exposure infrastructure is subjected to. The effort and diversity of potential issues can lead to conflicting priorities, and managing and monitoring discrete products and tools can lead to what is known as dashboard fatigue. 

Exposure management is necessary to govern and prioritize risk reduction. It conducts three types of activities:

1) Identifying the likelihood of exploitation based on visibility on an attack surface

2) Inventorying and categorizing the exposure (vulnerability, threat intelligence, digital assets)

3) Confirming whether attacks will be successful and whether security controls can assist with detecting or preventing them. 

Ridge Security exposure management support: As part of an integrated exposure management program, it enables organizations to frequently and consistently test their infrastructure, applications, and defenses, finding and mitigating weaknesses, gaps, and operational deficiencies faster. It acts like a human attacker, using sophisticated exploits to relentlessly locate exploits across an enterprise network, document its findings, and continuously measure results and effectiveness.