Technology that helps define the current state of exposures along an IT organization's network attack surface.
Explore Exposure CommandExposure assessment platforms (EAPs) are the technology components that lie at the foundation of a broader continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) program.
According to Gartner, "EAPs continuously identify and prioritize exposures, such as vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, across a broad range of asset classes. They natively deliver or integrate with discovery capabilities, such as assessment tools that enumerate exposures like vulnerabilities and configuration issues, to increase visibility."
And with that integration, the broader program begins to come into view for a security operations center (SOC) looking to take the next step in their proactive security posture that can include related aspects such as:
An EAP is one more tool that can maintain constant vigilance into an ever-changing attack surface and enable teams to go on offense to remediate.
As previously mentioned, a cybersecurity EAP is, essentially, the underlying technology of a broader continuous threat exposure management program. These are not simple things for a security organization to stand up; the maturity level – and staffing numbers – has to exist within the SOC for humans to properly automate EAPs and monitor the process so the entire ecosystem remains in sync and effective.
Back to Gartner for a moment: “EAPs support continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) programs by providing a better, more consolidated view of high-risk exposures, which in turn allows organizations to take key actions to prevent breaches. EAPs enable prioritization and remediation efforts by consolidating discovered exposures and prioritizing them based on exposure severity, asset criticality, business impact, likelihood of exploitation and the context of security controls.”
This is, perhaps, the key term in the above description and the most important part of the technology. If EAPs are unable to prioritize discovered exposures based on the organization’s unique environment, the platform isn’t doing its job.
Because EAP technology sits at the center of several critical functions, it should enable security leaders to prioritize based on the overall risk to the business, understand complex attack paths across cloud and on-prem environments, and surface critical focus areas for teams. It should elevate mitigation actions that would have the largest impact in reducing the overall risk score of an environment.
An effective EAP should be able to expand on traditional vulnerability management (VM) programs to deliver insights and context from vulnerability, cloud, and application security tools. The platform should establish a single, consolidated solution for exposure management across the organization.
As with any cybersecurity tool, an EAP is a complex tool that must be tuned appropriately to ensure maximum effectiveness. But what are the features practitioners might want to hone in on when considering an EAP for their unique environment?
SOC practitioners will likely want to find a way to prioritize scenarios that could be the most impactful to their specific IT and security environment. Carefully evaluating EAP vendors for flexibility in their capabilities will have the most benefit to a SOC in the long run.
An EAP should be the central component of an effective CTEM program, centralizing exposure-assessment results and adding the proper context so that threat responders and analysts can accurately score and prioritize remediation efforts. Let's take a look at some of the more granular benefits an EAP can bring to an organization.
EAPs contextualize potential exposures with threat intelligence, resulting in increased ability to prioritize and take action against the threat. Organizations overrun with vulnerability findings prioritized solely by Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) scores can supercharge efforts to add an additional layer of context that could spell the difference between breach and business as usual.
EAPs identify the most material risks to an IT organization and help to subsequently prioritize recommendations for remediation or short-term deprioritization, the latter of which may come as the result of a talent shortage.
EAP solutions offer a consolidated view, which enables organizations to reduce costs associated with having to sift through a significant amount of inconsequential data. In this way, organizations can also attract top talent by placing more mission-critical activities in their hands.
Reporting can help bolster efforts like threat detection, investigation, and response, while contextual asset enrichments and multiple views can aid in investigation acceleration.
These insights could enable organizations to prevent security incidents and breaches. The platforms can also improve operational efficiency by providing centralized visbility of assets and exposures, supporting risk scoring reporting and trend analysis across the organization.