Attack Surface Management (ASM) is a critical cybersecurity practice that focuses on continuously discovering, analyzing, prioritizing, remediating, and monitoring an organization's potential attack vectors. Here's a breakdown of what that means:

• Attack Surface:

  • This refers to the sum of all the different points where an unauthorized user (attacker) could try to enter data to or extract data from an environment. This includes things like:

    • Web applications

    • Cloud infrastructure

    • Network devices

    • Remote access points

    • Any other internet-facing assets

• The Goal of ASM:

  • To reduce the number of opportunities that malicious actors have to exploit vulnerabilities and gain unauthorized access to an organization's systems.

• Key Processes Involved:

  • Asset Discovery: Identifying all internet-facing assets, including those that may be unknown or "shadow IT."

  • Vulnerability Assessment: Detecting weaknesses and misconfigurations in those assets.

  • Prioritization: Ranking vulnerabilities based on their potential impact and likelihood of exploitation.

  • Remediation: Taking action to fix vulnerabilities, such as patching software or changing configurations.

  • Continuous Monitoring: Constantly tracking the attack surface for new or emerging threats.

In essence, ASM provides a comprehensive view of an organization's security posture from an attacker's perspective, enabling proactive risk mitigation.