As organizations increase their reliance on cloud services, remote work tools, IoT devices and smart infrastructures, and the use of third-party vendors, their exposure to cyber threats increases. Traditional approaches to vulnerability management are unable to keep up with rapidly changing business needs and an expanding attack surface. While scanning and patching known vulnerabilities remains critical, today’s complex threat landscape demands a more comprehensive strategy. Exposures encompass the total attack surface and all potential security gaps across an organization’s entire digital infrastructure. Examples include known vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and uncovered weaknesses. These differ from vulnerabilities, which are specific weaknesses or flaws in a system that could be exploited. Security leaders should consider adopting a holistic exposure management program to address both known and unknown exposures.
First let’s understand what exposure management is.
Exposure Management represents a comprehensive approach that looks at an organization’s entire attack surface and potential security risks across all their digital assets, both internally and externally. It goes beyond identifying and remediating vulnerabilities by providing a much wider view of an organization’s security posture. This approach enables businesses to understand the full breadth of their attack surface and exposures, and prioritize actions based on potential impact.
The evolution from vulnerability management to exposure management is becoming increasingly critical, according to Gartner. In their 2024 report, “How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management,” Gartner emphasizes that exposure management is more than just tools – it’s a comprehensive methodology that integrates people, processes, and technologies to effectively evaluate and assess exposures across both digital and physical assets. Gartner also highlights how this approach enhances and contextualizes security initiatives by providing data-driven insights into which assets, configurations, and vulnerabilities pose the greatest business risk. This allows security teams to effectively prioritize and allocate resources towards the most impactful remediations, tailored to their specific needs, industry threats, and business priorities. This approach strengthens key capabilities such as threat detection, investigation, and response (TDIR), and cyber risk management.
How Has Exposure Management Evolved from Traditional Vulnerability Management?
Vulnerability management has been a staple of security programs for decades. It’s long been considered a requirement for “good cyber hygiene.” However, many organizations still struggle with properly managing the large volume of vulnerabilities in their environment, including prioritizing mitigation or remediation of the vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk. Welcome “exposure management.” While vulnerability management focuses primarily on identifying and patching known vulnerabilities, exposure management has evolved to unify multiple security disciplines (including asset configuration, and patch management) into a comprehensive view of an organization’s attack surface – enabling teams to better identify, and prioritize critical exposures, particularly those actively exploited in the wild. Vulnerability management is a critical subset of exposure management, focusing on the detection and correction of security weaknesses.
Vulnerability management alone can’t address the full spectrum of security risks organizations face today, particularly with the increasing complexity brought by digital transformation.
Key Functions of Vulnerability Management vs. Exposure Management
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Components of Exposure Management:
Asset discovery and inventory
- Continuous discovery of all assets (cloud, on-prem, IoT, OT, mobile, etc).
- Understanding asset critically and business context
- Mapping relationships between assets
Assessing risks across the organization
- Evaluating exposures across the entire attack surface
- Prioritizing risks based on business impact
- Considering threat intelligence and attackers perspective
- Assessing security controls and configurations
- Analyzing potential attack paths and scenarios
- Evaluate third-party and supply chain risks
- Consider regulatory compliance requirements
Managing security posture
- Monitoring security metrics in real-time
- Managing security policies and compliance
- Coordinating remediation across teams
- Implementing automated response capabilities
- Maintaining continuous improvement processes
The key differences between these two are:
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Integration with other security technologies
Exposure management integrates with advanced security technologies, particularly Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). Integrating MDR and EDR into an exposure management program provides real-time threat detection, continuous monitoring, and rapid incident response, significantly reducing security risks.
MDR:
- Provides 24/7 monitoring of networks, endpoints, and cloud environments o Enables rapid incident response capabilities
- Offers expert analysis and threat hunting
- Delivers actionable threat intelligence
EDR:
- Monitors endpoint activity in real-time
- Provides automated response capabilities
- Enables treat hunting and investigation
- Supports forensic analysis
Moving Forward: Building an Exposure Management Program
As digital transformation continues to accelerate, organizations need to evolve their security practices beyond traditional vulnerability management. This evolution requires a systematic approach that:
• Builds upon existing vulnerability management foundations
• Implements a comprehensive exposure management practice
• Integrates people processes, and technologies effectively
• Maintains continuous monitoring and assessment
• Aligns security initiatives with business objectives
• Implements threat detection and response capabilities
• Creates sustainable security processes
Taking Action
The transition to exposure management involves alignment between teams, processes, and technologies, and this poses a massive undertaking for organizations. Working with LevelBlue can help streamline the process and provide the expertise needed to build a robust exposure management program. LevelBlue’s managed security services teams are an extension of your team. Our managed services operate in 10 global SOCs and work 24/7/365. With decades of cross-industry expertise and global recognition for our consulting services, LevelBlue experts are equipped to transform your security strategy to address exposures from all angles.
By partnering with LevelBlue, customers can benefit from:
- Access to experienced security professionals
- Continuous monitoring of your entire attack surface
- Expert validation of security controls
- Regular assessments and reporting
- 24/7 monitoring and response capabilities
- Up-to-date threat intelligence and industry insights Want to learn more about how LevelBlue can help.
Contact our security experts today to discuss your specific needs and challenges.
