Unified External Threat Surface Protection
Unified External Threat Surface Protection is a security strategy that manages and mitigates risks across an organization's internet-facing assets through a centralized and comprehensive approach.
Here's a breakdown of the key elements:
External Threat Surface: This refers to the collection of all digital assets that an organization exposes to the internet. This includes:
Websites and web applications
Email servers
DNS servers
Cloud services
APIs
Social media presence
IoT devices
Centralized and Comprehensive Approach: Instead of using disparate tools and techniques for different types of external assets, Unified External Threat Surface Protection emphasizes a holistic view. This involves:
Discovery: Identifying all external assets.
Assessment: Evaluating the security posture of each asset.
Monitoring: Continuously tracking changes and new threats.
Remediation: Taking action to address vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
Managing and Mitigating Risks: The ultimate goal is to reduce the likelihood and impact of cyberattacks originating from or targeting the external threat surface. This includes protecting against:
Data breaches
Website defacement
Denial-of-service attacks
Phishing
Account takeover
Why is it important?
Expanded Attack Surface: Organizations have increasing external assets, making it harder to manage security effectively.
Evolving Threats: Attackers are constantly finding new ways to exploit external vulnerabilities.
Need for Efficiency: A unified approach streamlines security operations and improves resource allocation.
Unified External Threat Surface Protection aims to provide complete visibility and control over an organization's external-facing digital presence to minimize cyber risks.
Here's how ThreatNG supports Unified External Threat Surface Protection:
ThreatNG excels at external discovery, providing the comprehensive visibility needed for Unified External Threat Surface Protection. It can perform purely external unauthenticated discovery, meaning it identifies assets without internal access or credentials. This is crucial for seeing the attack surface as an external attacker would. ThreatNG discovers a wide range of external assets:
This broad discovery capability ensures that organizations have a holistic view of their external threat surface.
ThreatNG goes beyond simply discovering assets; it assesses their security posture. This assessment capability is a core component of Unified External Threat Surface Protection, as it provides crucial information about the risks associated with each asset. ThreatNG performs various external assessments:
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: This assessment identifies weaknesses in web applications that could allow attackers to take control.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: ThreatNG evaluates the risk of attackers hijacking subdomains.
Cyber Risk Exposure: This assessment considers factors like vulnerabilities and exposed ports to determine the overall cyber risk exposure.
Data Leak Susceptibility: ThreatNG assesses the risk of leaking sensitive data from external-facing assets.
Mobile App Exposure: ThreatNG evaluates the security of an organization’s mobile apps.
These assessments provide a detailed understanding of the vulnerabilities across the external threat surface.
3. Reporting
ThreatNG's reporting capabilities are essential for communicating and managing risks across the external threat surface.
ThreatNG offers various reporting options, including executive, technical, and prioritized reports.
These reports can provide a consolidated view of the external threat surface and highlight the most critical risks, enabling security teams to prioritize their efforts.
Unified External Threat Surface Protection requires continuous monitoring to detect changes and new threats. ThreatNG provides these capabilities:
ThreatNG continuously monitors the external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings.
This ensures that organizations know new vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, or emerging threats that could impact their external assets.
ThreatNG's investigation modules provide detailed information for analyzing and responding to threats on the external attack surface. These modules offer in-depth insights:
Domain Intelligence: This module provides information about domains, DNS records, and subdomains, which is crucial for investigating phishing attacks or subdomain takeovers.
Sensitive Code Exposure: This module helps identify exposed code and secrets, which can be used to understand and mitigate the risk of credential compromise.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: This module provides visibility into cloud service configurations and potential vulnerabilities.
ThreatNG's intelligence repositories provide valuable context for understanding and prioritizing threats to the external attack surface. These repositories include:
Dark web presence: Information on compromised credentials and attacker activity.
Known vulnerabilities: A database of publicly known vulnerabilities.
7. Working with Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's capabilities can be integrated with other security solutions to enhance Unified External Threat Surface Protection:
While the document does not explicitly detail integrations, ThreatNG can complement solutions like SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) systems by providing external threat intelligence to enrich security alerts.
It can also work with vulnerability management tools to provide a complete view of internal and external vulnerabilities.
ThreatNG provides a powerful Unified External Threat Surface Protection platform. Its external discovery, assessment, reporting, continuous monitoring, investigation modules, and intelligence repositories provide comprehensive visibility, risk assessment, and threat intelligence, enabling organizations to effectively manage and mitigate risks across their entire external threat surface.
