External Attack Surface Management

Cloud, mobility, IoT, and remote workforces have expanded enterprise attack surfaces, exposing potentially exposing enterprise assets to external threats. External Attack Surface Management (EASM) identifies and manages risks presented by Internet-facing digital resources and data assets. It is a discipline associated with the processes and technology needed to discover assets and effectively manage their vulnerabilities. Examples include exposed servers, credentials, public cloud service misconfigurations, dark web disclosures and third-party partner software code vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors.

EASM also helps prioritize discovered vulnerabilities and risks, providing information about systems, cloud services and applications available and visible in the public domain to would-be attackers. security and risk leaders utilize EASM to provide them with valuable risk context and actionable information.

EASM delivers visibility through six primary capabilities:

  • Continuous monitoring for exposed assets (e.g., clouds, IPs, domains, certificates and IoT)
  • Asset discovery for external-facing assets and systems
  • Analysis to assess and prioritize the risks and vulnerabilities discovered
  • Remediation, mitigation, and incident response through prebuilt integrations with ticketing systems and SOAR tools
  • Digital business initiatives such as cloud adoption, remote working and IT/OT/IoT convergence
  • Understanding what organizations expose from an attacker’s point of view

Ridge Security EASM support

  • Supporting a EASM program, by implementing auto pentesting, red teaming and EASM security measures, organizations gain greater visibility and control to overcome breaches, minimize risks, and increase security resilience. As part of an integrated EASM program, Ridge Security’s RidgeBot®, an automated pentest robot for risk-based vulnerability and risk management, acts like human attackers using sophisticated exploits. RidgeBot relentlessly locates exploits across an enterprise network, documents its findings, continuously measures results and effectiveness, and verifies vulnerabilities.
  • RidgeBot enables organizations to conduct automated pentesting from an attacker’s point of view. Before exposures are put into production, RidgeBot finds, assesses, prioritizes, and fixes a wide set of exposures before bad actors get to them. The resulting validation allows organizations to see what would happen in the event of an attack, how their defenses would cope, and how well the processes would perform.

Vulnerability assessment (VA) solutions operate across on-premises, cloud, and virtual environments to help reduce risk exposure. They discover, identify and report on operating system and software vulnerabilities for IT, cloud, IoT and OT devices.

Many organizations are implementing VA solutions to better understand, prioritize and reduce risk and exposure from threats. VA establishes a baseline of connected assets and vulnerabilities, identifying and reporting on the security configuration of assets. VA supports compliance reporting and control frameworks, risk assessment and remediation prioritization, and remediation activities.

A foundational component of the vulnerability management process, VA supports security management, proactive prevention of threats and conformity with regulations and compliance regimes. Vulnerability assessment is a key process in understanding and dealing with an organization’s attack surfaces that can be exposed to threat actors, helping to reduce risk.

Many regulations and standards, such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001 require organizations to perform VAs to remain in compliance.

Advancements and innovations for VA tools and services are being seen in discovery, prioritization and mitigation, tracking the vulnerability remediation progress and workflow automation to meet evolving requirements and needs. This includes areas like cloud, containers, OT and vulnerability prioritization.

Ridge Security vulnerability assessment support

As part of an integrated vulnerability assessment, Ridge Security’s RidgeBot® enables organizations to not only assess but also validate vulnerabilities discovered in their infrastructure, applications, and defenses. RidgeBots relentlessly locate exploits across an enterprise network, document their findings, continuously measure results and effectiveness, and verify vulnerabilities.

RidgeBot enables organizations to conduct automated pentesting from an attacker’s point of view. Before exposures are put into production, RidgeBot finds, assesses, prioritizes, and fixes a wide set of exposures before bad actors get to them. The resulting validation allows organizations to see what would happen in the event of an attack, how their defenses would cope, and how well the processes would perform.

Learn more about RidgeBot’s support for PCI DSS.

Learn more about RidgeBot’s support for GDPR.

Learn more about RidgeBot’s support for HIPPAA.

Learn more about RidgeBot’s support for ISO 27001