For years, vulnerability management has been a cornerstone of an organization’s cybersecurity posture. However, despite regular patching and continuous monitoring, vulnerabilities still exist. The reason is often simple: attackers target security gaps that are overlooked or unknown. External Attack Surface Management (EASM) is one of the latest solutions designed to help close these gaps and extend the capabilities of traditional vulnerability management.
What Is Vulnerability Management?
Vulnerability management is the process of identifying, assessing, and remediating security flaws within an organization’s IT infrastructure. This process is generally centered around scanning known assets—whether they are physical servers, virtual machines, cloud services, or software applications—for known vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities are typically cataloged in public databases like CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which helps security teams prioritize the remediation of the most critical flaws.
Vulnerability management is crucial, as it helps security teams continuously patch and address flaws in software, hardware, and network configurations. However, it is limited by what is already known. If assets aren’t properly documented or if systems slip through the cracks, they become blind spots in the organization’s cybersecurity posture.
EASM: Extending Beyond Vulnerability Management
External Attack Surface Management (EASM) goes beyond traditional vulnerability management by identifying risks and exposures that may be hidden from view. EASM tools continuously scan for internet-facing assets, including shadow IT, and provide organizations with visibility into assets that security teams may not even know exist. EASM solutions are designed to be proactive, helping organizations identify external vulnerabilities before they become critical threats.
While vulnerability management primarily operates within known environments and asset inventories, EASM actively seeks out unknown or mismanaged resources. It doesn’t just scan for vulnerabilities within known systems—it uncovers blind spots by providing a comprehensive view of the external attack surface.
Key Differences
- Scope: Vulnerability management focuses on known assets, continuously scanning for recognized threats and vulnerabilities within an established inventory. EASM, on the other hand, takes a broader approach by scanning for all internet-facing assets, including shadow IT and unregistered systems, providing visibility into unknown and unmanaged assets.
- Continuous Discovery: One of the critical features of EASM is continuous discovery. While vulnerability management tools typically scan on a periodic basis (weekly, monthly, etc.), EASM tools continuously scan environments in real time. This ensures that organizations always have up-to-date information on their external attack surface, even as it changes over time.
- Visibility of Unmanaged Assets: Traditional vulnerability management relies on what is known and documented, leaving out unmanaged assets or those that are overlooked. EASM, however, identifies assets that may have been forgotten, misclassified, or never registered in the first place. This gives security teams a fuller picture of the organization’s potential risks.
- Contextual Prioritization: EASM solutions provide contextual prioritization of vulnerabilities based on asset criticality, traffic patterns, and exposure. This means organizations can focus on securing their most sensitive or high-value assets. Vulnerability management tools, on the other hand, tend to prioritize based solely on the severity of known vulnerabilities, without factoring in contextual risk factors like asset exposure.
- Integration with Other Security Tools: EASM solutions work seamlessly with existing security stacks, including vulnerability management platforms. By feeding new findings into the vulnerability remediation workflow, EASM ensures that previously unrecognized risks are addressed and that security teams are better equipped to handle evolving threats.
Why EASM Is Necessary
As organizations continue to expand and move more resources to the cloud, security teams face increasing complexity in managing their attack surface. Many companies today operate in multi-cloud environments, with assets scattered across different cloud providers. In such environments, asset mismanagement or oversight can easily lead to security vulnerabilities. EASM helps mitigate this risk by offering a unified and automated approach to continuous discovery, visibility, and risk identification.
The increasing prevalence of shadow IT—where employees use unsanctioned cloud services or devices—further compounds the problem. In fact, Gartner reports that shadow IT accounts for 30-40% of IT spending in large organizations, with many employees intentionally bypassing security measures. EASM solutions help detect and mitigate these threats, providing real-time insights and preventing these systems from becoming potential entry points for attackers.
The Shortcomings of Vulnerability Management
Vulnerability management is a critical component of an organization’s security posture, but it has inherent limitations. As previously mentioned, vulnerability management operates within the boundaries of a known asset inventory. If an asset isn’t registered or is misclassified, it becomes a blind spot, which is exactly what attackers are looking for. Many organizations rely on internal Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs) to track assets, but human error, process drift, and rapid infrastructure changes can lead to missing or outdated entries.
This lack of visibility often leads to gaps in security, where systems are left unpatched, orphaned, and vulnerable. A known vulnerability could be left unaddressed simply because the system was not included in the asset inventory.
How EASM Fills the Gaps
EASM provides a more complete view of an organization’s attack surface, helping to identify the assets that may have slipped through the cracks. Some of the key features of EASM include:
- Continuous Discovery: EASM tools continuously monitor and map out the organization’s entire internet-facing infrastructure, ensuring no asset is left unseen.
- Real-Time Alerts: As soon as a vulnerability is identified, EASM tools send alerts to security teams, ensuring immediate action can be taken.
- Simulated Attack Scenarios: EASM solutions simulate real-world attack scenarios to uncover potential risks and expose assets that may be vulnerable to exploitation.
- External Validation: EASM solutions validate which discovered assets are actually vulnerable by simulating attacker reconnaissance. This helps security teams to better prioritize remediation efforts.
Five Key Use Cases for EASM
- Continuous Monitoring: Unlike periodic penetration tests, which are resource-intensive and disruptive, EASM tools automatically scan continuously, giving security teams constant visibility.
- Asset Reconciliation: EASM solutions can reconcile CMDBs and IT asset inventories by discovering assets that are missed or misclassified in traditional systems, creating a comprehensive view of the environment.
- Prioritizing Critical Assets: By analyzing asset exposure and risk, EASM helps security teams focus on high-value or critical assets that are most at risk.
- Closing the Loop on Vulnerability Management: By integrating with vulnerability management systems, EASM ensures that newly discovered vulnerabilities are added to the remediation process, closing the loop on security efforts.
How Can Netizen Help?
Netizen ensures that security gets built-in and not bolted-on. Providing advanced solutions to protect critical IT infrastructure such as the popular “CISO-as-a-Service” wherein companies can leverage the expertise of executive-level cybersecurity professionals without having to bear the cost of employing them full time.
We also offer compliance support, vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, and more security-related services for businesses of any size and type.
Additionally, Netizen offers an automated and affordable assessment tool that continuously scans systems, websites, applications, and networks to uncover issues. Vulnerability data is then securely analyzed and presented through an easy-to-interpret dashboard to yield actionable risk and compliance information for audiences ranging from IT professionals to executive managers.
Netizen is an ISO 27001:2013 (Information Security Management), ISO 9001:2015, and CMMI V 2.0 Level 3 certified company. We are a proud Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business that is recognized by the U.S. Department of Labor for hiring and retention of military veterans.
Questions or concerns? Feel free to reach out to us any time –
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