In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, organizations face a constant barrage of external threats targeting their IT assets. As attackers become increasingly adept at exploiting security weaknesses, minimizing an organization’s external attack surface has become a critical necessity. The primary objective of this strategy is straightforward: to transform an organization into a hard target, compelling malicious actors to seek out less protected alternatives.
To effectively achieve this goal, organizations must gain a comprehensive understanding of their external attack surface, viewing it through the lens of potential threats. This requires identifying and closing as many vulnerabilities as possible to create a more formidable defense against cyber intrusions.
### Discovering the Unknowns and Reducing Cyber Risk
An organization’s attack surface includes all potential entry points through which cybercriminals might infiltrate systems or extract sensitive information. The external attack surface specifically encompasses all IT assets and technologies that an organization operates or utilizes, which are accessible via internet/IP addresses, domain names, or ports. Some of these critical exposure points include:
– Company websites and domains
– Web and mobile applications
– Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
– Cloud and email infrastructure
– Remote access points and portals
– Network devices and services
– Hosts
– SSL/TLS certificates
– DNS records
– File shares
– Code repositories
– Legacy systems and forgotten subdomains
– Online test environments
– Orphaned accounts
Additionally, the organization’s brand can be exploited by phishers, along with stolen corporate credentials or leaked sensitive data.
The rapid digital transformation of companies—bolstered by trends like Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), remote work models, cloud computing, and numerous corporate mergers—has led to an explosion of shadow IT. This proliferation complicates the attack surface and hampers effective patch management, making it nearly impossible to secure every vulnerable point in real-time. As a result, organizations have recognized that robust external attack surface management (EASM) is essential for understanding and mitigating cyber risks that could harm their reputation and financial stability.
### Perpetual Situational Awareness
Outpost24, a European firm headquartered in Sweden, offers a solution designed to assist organizations in managing their ever-expanding attack surfaces. Their EASM solution, known as Sweepatic, is cloud-based, making the onboarding process straightforward. Clients simply input their organization’s name, primary domains, or external IP addresses to initiate scanning.
The platform actively searches for a wide range of vulnerabilities, including software weaknesses, inadequate encryption, misconfigured server and cloud environments, unsecured DNS setups, open ports, and exposed services. Utilizing passive, non-intrusive scanning techniques, Sweepatic remains continuously operational without disrupting asset performance or daily activities.
According to Martin Jartelius, CISO and Product Owner at Outpost24, the platform often uncovers significant blind spots that organizations might overlook, such as exposed management interfaces of devices or misconfigured S3 storage. These vulnerabilities can serve as entry points into internal networks and can even be leveraged to facilitate phishing attacks.
Jartelius pointed out that the revelation of an organization’s extensive attack surface is often a moment of surprise for clients. Many are initially uncomfortable upon realizing the vastness of potential vulnerabilities. However, he emphasizes that recognizing the situation, assessing its impact, and making informed decisions is far more valuable than ignoring the problem. Although ignorance may bring momentary comfort, it is not a sustainable strategy.
### From Vulnerability to Proactive Risk Management
While attack surface management is a relatively new field, implementing a solution that aggregates information into a single platform provides organizations with continued, deeper insights over time. Outpost24’s Sweepatic begins with continuous detection of exposed assets and moves on to automated security assessments and risk-based reporting.
The platform employs contextual risk scoring to prioritize vulnerabilities, considering not just the exposed assets, but the context surrounding the exposure. This scoring system, reminiscent of academic grades, categorizes risks from A to F based on severity. For instance, if two vulnerabilities share the same Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score, but one is under active exploitation, it would receive a lower score compared to the non-exploited one, even though both could potentially be harmful.
The platform additionally aggregates findings into seven categories, allowing organizations to quickly identify weaknesses in different areas, such as encryption, and take immediate steps to enhance security. By benchmarking these scores against industry averages, organizations can gauge their vulnerability relative to their peers, prompting proactive measures to address critical points.
### A Practical Tool
While the Outpost24 EASM platform can benefit many departments within an organization, it is primarily utilized by IT security teams. System administrators may not interact with it frequently, but cybersecurity architects or CISOs rely on it to assess whether their recommended security strategies are effective. Continuous scanning enables them to monitor the results of implemented measures consistently.
By integrating discovery processes with vulnerability management solutions, organizations can efficiently evaluate their security posture, identify flaws, and allocate responsibilities for resolution accordingly. This approach fosters enhanced control over exposure while facilitating the automation of critical security processes.
### Key Benefits of Implementing Outpost24 EASM
Organizations in sectors that are highly vulnerable to cyber threats or undergoing significant digital transitions benefit most from utilizing Outpost24’s EASM solution. For instance, healthcare organizations prioritize uncovering exposed assets and addressing critical vulnerabilities, while financial institutions focus on ensuring that operational configurations are sound to fend off possible data leaks.
The primary advantage of using Outpost24’s EASM platform lies in gaining visibility and managing risks within the external attack surface, effectively steering organizations towards adopting a proactive cybersecurity framework.
Lehnis added that many clients often discover inefficiencies within their internal IT processes, such as ineffective patch management, which necessitate improvement following their engagement with the EASM tool.
Moreover, organizations can significantly reduce their response time to emergent cyber threats. Previously, they might have lacked knowledge of all affected assets, which led to lengthy searches for vulnerabilities. With the EASM platform, clients can filter through findings efficiently and commence patching efforts almost immediately, confident that they are not overlooking any critical issues.
### Conclusion
Understanding the external attack surface is paramount, as exposed assets and vulnerabilities can indicate neglect of fundamental security practices. Such oversights signal to potential attackers that an organization may be vulnerable, and can detract from the overall user experience.
Thus, the importance of employing an EASM tool, such as Sweepatic from Outpost24, cannot be overstated. In an era where cyber threats are omnipresent, having a solution that continually identifies, monitors, and mitigates these risks is not just advantageous; it is essential.