ThreatVision Resources

What is EASM and How Does it Help Protect Organizations?

2024.02.20Product Management

In today's digital landscape, organizations face an ever-evolving array of cybersecurity threats that challenge their resilience and operational integrity. From sophisticated phishing attacks to complex ransomware, the methods employed by cybercriminals grow increasingly advanced, demanding a proactive and comprehensive approach to defense. Enter External Attack Surface Management (EASM), a cutting-edge strategy designed to bolster organizational cybersecurity by identifying, analyzing, and mitigating threats posed to external digital assets.

This article dives into the intricacies of EASM, explaining how it functions as a critical cybersecurity framework for modern organizations by protecting against external threats and strengthening overall security posture.

What is EASM?

External Attack Surface Management (EASM) is a cybersecurity discipline focused on the continuous discovery, inventory, assessment, and management of an organization's digital assets accessible from the internet. These assets include servers, web applications, domains, cloud resources, and other components that organizations rely on to fulfill their missions and operations. The importance of External Attack Surface Management cannot be overstated, as it supplements an organization's internal defenses and ensures that vulnerabilities on the outside are identified and addressed before they can be exploited.

How EASM Works

The digital assets comprising an organization's external attack surface represent the sum of all points from which an adversary may find access to internal networks and systems. While the scale and complexity of contemporary infrastructure mandates that these assets be publicly accessible - for instance, to enable service delivery, provide support, or facilitate communication - attackers leverage the same properties to gain unauthorized access, launch cyber-physical attacks, or damage the reputation or integrity of organizations. EASM plays a pivotal role in the protection of this far-reaching attack surface.

EASM performs three foundational functions:

Discovery

EASM solution will identify an organization's points of exposure such as servers, IPs, applications or third-party services. Advanced discovery methods may incorporate the use of network scans, crawlers, passive listening to internet traffic and other techniques.

Risk analysis

EASM continuously profiles and assesses every exposed asset, generating a comprehensive understanding of an organization's attack surface. Every asset is interrogated to extract detailed metadata, which is then contextualized, analyzed and interpreted, allowing it to be categorized according to function and risk.

Threat mitigation

EASM is diagnostic and prescriptive, providing the insight and guidance that defenders need to triage and remediate the most urgent and exploitable threats. This process will typically involve correlating artifacts discovered across multiple assets to form attack structures, which are then analyzed to identify active and impending threat scenarios. It is this diagnostic approach that allows organizations to act on their various vulnerabilities in the most strategic and impactful manner.

Key Components of EASM

Inventory of External Digital Assets

The first component of EASM involves developing a comprehensive inventory of all digital assets that are remotely accessible from the internet. This inventory becomes the foundation for all later EASM activities.

Continuous Monitoring and Risk Assessment

EASM dictates that the external attack surface be continuously monitored to identify new assets and associated vulnerabilities. Each asset is assessed for obvious, high-level risk for the purposes of prioritization.

Integration with Threat Intelligence

EASM systems integrate with one or more threat intelligence feeds to provide enrichment of assets and vulnerabilities, including their risk factors.

The Role of EASM in Cybersecurity

EASM extensions cybersecurity protections beyond traditional perimeters by proactively searching for threats and vulnerabilities that hackers would otherwise discover and exploit. As mentioned, hackers scan constantly for exposed assets to target.

Unlike reactive security measures that respond after an incident has occurred, EASM works by identifying potential security issues early. By continuously monitoring the external attack surface, these solutions can identify unexpected exposure points, misconfigurations, or vulnerabilities in real-time. This means that organizations can take remedial action to address security gaps immediately, significantly reducing the window of opportunity for an attack.

What types of threats can EASM help to mitigate? It can be particularly effective for security teams to better defend against threats that target their external assets. For example:

Phishing Attacks

EASM solutions can be used to monitor for the unauthorized use of key brand names or domains, suppressing the ability for an adversary to stand-up a fraudulent site that exploits a company’s identity in a phishing campaign.

Malware Distribution

Identifying compromised assets or malicious content delivery in real-time can greatly assist with thwarting attempts to distribute malware to customers and prospects of the company.

Vulnerabilities in Public-Facing Applications

As was the case with many recent vulnerabilities, the term “public-facing web applications” often translates directly to “high profile targets.” EASM solutions that can identify vulnerabilities in web applications and ensure they get patched or mitigated in short order (before they can be exploited) are exceptionally valuable.

Benefits of EASM

Implementing EASM have several benefits such as:

Improved Security Posture With the proactive detection and mitigation of vulnerabilities and threats, organizations can significantly improve their overall security posture. This proactive approach helps prevent data breaches and other security incidents, safeguarding sensitive information and maintaining customer trust.
Compliance and Risk Reduction EASM also plays a vital role in compliance and risk management. By ensuring that external assets adhere to security best practices and regulatory requirements, organizations can avoid costly penalties and reputational damage associated with non-compliance and security breaches.

Conclusion

External Attack Surface Management (EASM) is an essential component of contemporary cybersecurity strategies. By enabling the proactive identification and remediation of threats, EASM empowers organizations to address an expansive array of cyber threats. While its implementation presents several challenges, the benefits of increased visibility, an improved security posture and a more compliant posture make EASM a critical technology for any organization looking to strengthen its defenses in the digital age. As the threat landscape continues to evolve, the importance of robust and proactive security technologies such as EASM will only grow, making it incumbent on the part of organizations to remain one step ahead of their cyber adversaries.

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