All about EASM in Cyber Security

EASM, External Attack Surface Management

EASM, short for External Attack Surface Management, is an excellent tool to find those potential vulnerabilities and security gaps. It’s also a great way for an organization to safeguard its digital attack surface. It’s also known as the process of identifying, mitigating, and analyzing any vulnerabilities and risks associated with an organization’s external-facing digital assets. These include its network infrastructure, applications, and websites. The process involves securing and monitoring any exposed attack surface to ensure there’s no breach or unauthorized entry.

The one thing you should know is that attackers never miss an opportunity, and that’s why it’s essential to ensure there’s enough network security. Attackers will go for any form of data that’s exposed, and they will attack any information, whether in the cloud or on-premise. Therefore the best way to ensure your organization is safe from such attacks is by understanding and managing the ways in which an attacker could access data from your organization.

Further Information on the Attack Surface

In simple terms, an attack surface is any vulnerabilities, attack vectors and pathways where hackers can exploit or carry out any cyber threats, all in the name of gaining unauthorized entry. 

Types of Attack Surfaces

Here are some forms of attack surfaces 

Rogue Assets

This is when attackers create a duplicate website of the one they wish to gain access to. The website or application will commonly impersonate the organization’s domain.

Known assets 

These are assets that were inventoried in the past. It may include corporate websites and any dependencies.

Vendors

An attack surface may also include an organization’s third-party and fourth-party vendor relationships.

 

Unknown assets

This includes the orphaned IT and Shadow IT infrastructure, which may have been previously external to an organization’s security team and may also include forgotten projects, marketing sites and development websites.

 

The term external attack surface is used to differentiate an organization’s internal attack surface, which often includes vulnerabilities that may affect assets such as physical hardware and firewalls. The difference between an external and an internal attack surface is derived from the location in which the attacks may originate.

 

The Relationship Between EASM and Cyber Security

From reading the above, you can already see that these two are family. EASM is looked at as a continuous way of managing any cyber security risks especially on the external facing digital assets. The main aim of an EASM strategy is to ensure the cyber hygiene of an organization is at its best.

An EASM strategy has become a priority for most organizations that want to maintain an extensive digital footprint or manage a sizable digital supply chain. Implementing an EASM strategy towards a cyber security program can assist an organization in detecting any cyber threats across all its misconfiguration, web applications, APIS, public cloud services, shadow IT and other digital assets.

 

Why Have an EASM Strategy?

Here are some reasons why an EASM Strategy is important: 

  • As most organizations move more and more operations online, the chances of a cyber attack are also increasing. As businesses adopt cloud technologies, the boundaries of the external attack surface becomes even more challenging to secure. This simply means the expansion increases the number of potential entries for attackers.
  • Most organizations tend to focus on protecting the known attack surfaces and forget that most attacks originate from the unknown surfaces or those that are poorly managed.
  • Organizations are also constantly deploying new technologies and forgetting about security infrastructure to protect them. The rapid deployment could also lead to some vulnerabilities that can be exploited by cybercriminals. Therefore, the external attack surface grows in both size and complexity.

 

How EASM Works

Here’s how an EASM works tirelessly to secure your organization’s information: 

  • The EASM tool will scan an asset for any vulnerabilities while scrutinizing configurations and identifying any sections with a potential security risk.
  • It will then prioritize these vulnerabilities by sectioning them on how severe they are. This means the IT team of an organization can address the most critical issues first.
  • The EASM tool will also provide some recommendations to mitigate and correct any vulnerabilities found.
  • It’s also essential that an EASM tool has a continuous monitoring system with real-time feedback as a mechanism to help the IT professionals maintain the utmost security for any public facing digital infrastructure.

 

Overall, an EASM solution improves password security strategies. It does this by proactively monitoring to find any leaked credentials to detect compromised accounts and provide the necessary real time alerts and notifications. This is a great tool to identify the source of a bridge and also understand where the leaked credential is located. Additionally, EASM solutions also identify risky users who may need additional training on how to operate the system properly.

 

Conclusion

We can all agree that a cyber attack can cause irreversible damage to some organizations. It can also cause distrust with clients as they fear losing more. Therefore it’s essential for organizations to understand and implement an EASM strategy to ensure that all sensitive information is kept safe. As the digital landscape grows organizations also need to understand that the vulnerability of the system is increased. Therefore adding an EASM solution will provide tools that will ensure a secure IT environment.