What is Exposure Management

5 min readJul 14, 2023

Introduction

Businesses add new vulnerabilities and attack vectors when they update and grow their IT infrastructure. Cyber threat actors are simultaneously creating new tactics, honing their current ones, and recognizing new dangers to current assets.

The process of mapping a company’s digital attack surface and creating and implementing measures to address these security threats is known as exposure management. An essential element of a business cybersecurity program is exposure management. This article covers detailed knowledge of Exposure Management.

Stages of Exposure Management

Exposure management is a long-term approach that gradually lowers a company’s vulnerability to cyber threats.

A firm can assess its attack surface, track its cybersecurity performance in light of the shifting cyber threat landscape, and gradually minimize its surface by implementing exposure management, an ongoing, continuous process.

A comprehensive assessment of an organization’s internal and external attack surface, accurate identification of cyber exposure and vulnerabilities, and provision of an exposure management program that prioritizes remediation procedures are all part of an exposure management program.

Understanding Exposure

In a business ecosystem that is becoming more complicated, an exposure management platform aids organizations in identifying and resolving blind spots. Businesses are becoming increasingly aware that their suppliers, partners, and third-party vendors are potential targets for attack.

When it comes to exposure control, organizations gain from being proactive. Businesses can assess an organization’s attack surface by adopting a hacker’s perspective and fixing known flaws using ethical hacking and penetration testing methods.

Prioritizing Cyber Risk Management

To lower the danger of cybercrime, the risk management strategy used by exposure management systems ensures that vulnerabilities and exposures are swiftly addressed.

Regular risk assessments are crucial to help security operations focus remediation efforts since the cyber threat landscape is continually evolving and growing in breadth and complexity.

Organizing the Response

By utilising dynamic, real-time threat intelligence, the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and other stakeholders can ensure that the best security measures are implemented and updated.

It is crucial that the reaction be documented so that the company can monitor its progress, lay out a roadmap for others to follow, and have proof of the deployment of security controls that can be helpful for regulatory compliance.

Exposure Remediation

To evaluate the success of their security programs, businesses can utilize security ratings or critical KPIs. The maturity of their security programs can be compared to those of other organizations using objective ratings.

Whether the security controls are brand-new or already in place, they require constant evaluation since vulnerability mitigation and remediation are ongoing processes, not one-time events.

The cybersecurity team must ensure that established controls are functioning as intended. If the vulnerabilities or exposures are not documented, they must be, and then they must be fixed.

What does Exposure Management Do?

Exposure management makes a comprehensive perspective of your modern attack surface possible, helping your organization better comprehend your cyber risk and make better business decisions. Your IT and security teams will be better prepared to address cyber risk from a technical and business perspective if they understand how your attack surface looks and where you have the most significant risk.

Benefits of Exposure Management

The goal of exposure management is to advance vulnerability management. Some advantages it can offer are as follows:

Greater Visibility

Exposure management aims to increase the visibility of a company’s digital attack surface. These benefits extend beyond vulnerability identification and repair to IT and security.

Reduced Risk

By enhancing visibility and automating processes, exposure management improves risk management. It lowers the risk of cyberattacks on an organization by addressing more security holes earlier.

Cost Savings

Preventing a cyberattack is usually less expensive than remediating one after the fact. By plugging security holes before they can be used against you, efficient exposure management can reduce the cost of security.

How Does Exposure Management Help Guide Better Business Decisions?

A thorough understanding of your organization’s current attack surface is provided through exposure management. You can access your assets from anywhere, identify your security flaws, and prioritize addressing them for the most significant impact with the least amount of work. You can more correctly and efficiently identify and communicate your cyber risk by concentrating efforts on preventing anticipated cyberattacks rather than remaining in a reactive posture, which promotes optimal business performance.

The Role of Exposure Management in Building Cybersecurity Programs

A cybersecurity program aims to control how exposed a company is to potential online dangers. This calls for proactive and reactive actions to detect and patch security holes before attackers use them to their advantage.

The proactive cybersecurity operations of an organization must include exposure management. A company can figure out where and how it is most likely to be attacked by mapping its attack surface and identifying its vulnerabilities. This information assists cybersecurity operations by highlighting the areas where an organization should take action to address the potential cyber dangers to the enterprise.

How to Build an Exposure Management Program

Use these steps to launch an exposure management program:

Audit Existing Security Visibility Architecture

Many businesses can see their digital attack surface, at least in part. An organization might, for instance, conduct recurring vulnerability assessments and penetration testing or keep track of the hardware and software it employs.

Auditing the organization’s current exposure management architecture and programs is the first step in creating an exposure management program. For instance, the organization needs to know its solutions and how well they are integrated.

Identify Visibility Gaps

An organization can begin evaluating the efficacy of monitoring possible exposures once it has established the scope of its current security monitoring infrastructure.

Understanding an organization’s current IT and security architectures is necessary for this phase. The business must be aware of its IT systems and how each of its current risk-monitoring tools and procedures addresses it. Potential flaws include neglecting systems and needing to adequately watch out for specific hazards in a system that might be vulnerable to them.

Evaluate and Improve Processes

The organization can take action to close visibility gaps after identifying any that already exist. The organization can then review and enhance its risk remediation methods based on increased visibility.

Define and Assess Metrics for Remediation

This is an excellent opportunity to generate metrics for an organization’s remediation process if it does not already have any, such as the remediation of severe vulnerabilities. The company should assess whatever metrics it may have in light of modifications made to its security monitoring infrastructure.

These metrics should undergo routine audits and evaluations. This makes it easier to ensure that a company’s exposure management program accommodates business requirements.