A company’s attack surface is any area of their network that is susceptible to malicious threats. The smaller an attack surface is, the easier it is to protect your company’s sensitive data.
Yet the typical attack surface is growing for every company in the world. Organizations must now implement a strategic protection plan and modern technology, or risk not only losing sensitive data to cyber threats, but falling foul of data privacy laws as well.
In this blog we will dive into exactly what attack surface management is and what technologies are critical to its success in 2023.
What is attack surface management?
Attack surface management is the process of identifying, analyzing, and managing the various vulnerabilities and potential entry points that an attacker could use to gain access to a network or system.
By using a combination of people, processes, best practices and technology, the goal of attack surface management is to reduce the overall attack surface of a network or system, making it more difficult for attackers to exploit vulnerabilities and gain unauthorized access.
Attack surface management has changed dramatically in recent years. As organizations have evolved in how they do business and how they operate, the traditional approach of securing a company’s traditional walls and perimeter no longer works.
New threats, a reliance on connected systems, cloud applications and distributed work environments have all contributed to an ever-expanding and complicated attack surface that has increased cyber risk.
Successful attack surface management today involves the implementation of technology in three primary areas of innovation:
- cyber asset attack surface management (CAASM);
- digital risk protection services (DRPS);
- and external attack surface management (EASM).
Here are three key technologies that will enable your business to enhance its attack surface management strategy and, as a result, minimize cyber risk.
The top attack surface management tools to minimize cyber risk
1. Data discovery software
There are several key elements to effective attack surface management, and the first is gaining visibility into your data. The problem is, traditional asset discovery can no longer keep up with the ever-changing landscape of how today’s organizations operate - and the new vulnerabilities that come with that.
Data discovery, however, is a different proposition. Rather than assessing a company’s traditional walls (such as its hardware, routers and software), data discovery software scans a company’s entire environment to find and identify where structured and unstructured data resides.
Data discovery provides businesses with the visibility they need to identify, classify, and track sensitive data so that they can better keep it secure, identify risk level and ensure that they are handling it in a way that complies with relevant data privacy regulations.
2. Automated data classification
To make the process of finding data even easier, automated data classification software can be used to classify an organization's data based on a set of clearly defined characteristics, allowing the business to separate data by classifications such as its content, how it’s being used, the requirements it needs to comply with data privacy regulations or the sensitivity of its data type.
Data classification software runs in real-time in the background of your network, identifying sensitive data and automatically implementing your classification policy where required, making it easy for your business to understand how each piece of data should be stored, managed, used and shared.
3. Risk assessment technology
For your business to truly protect its data, it’s critical to have insight into your overall cyber risk. To do this, many businesses undergo traditional vulnerability assessments that are performed just a few times a year. Yet all this does is offer point-in-time results that give a snapshot of where businesses are vulnerable at only that specific time.
Businesses should instead implement a modern attack surface management platform that continuously identifies sensitive data across all digital assets, allowing them to prioritize data loss prevention, compliance and security initiatives based on risk benchmarking.
Real-time visibility into cyber risk ensures businesses have the insights they need to make actionable changes that drive continuous security improvements.
Interested in learning more about these attack surface management technologies and how they can help better secure your company’s data? Book a demo of the Cavelo platform today, and find out how our technology gives you the visibility you need to better secure sensitive data.
