If your organization has poor network security, it can lead to vulnerabilities that result in cyberattacks and data breaches. These attacks often result in prolonged network downtime, damage to a business's reputation, loss of customers, and reduced revenue.
These consequences will decrease employee productivity and efficiency and can be detrimental to any organization. Cyberattacks and data breaches can cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to remediate.
For these reasons, it is essential to understand what Attack Surface Management is and the challenges associated with the strategy, so you can determine whether it is the right approach for your organization and, if necessary, how to mitigate these challenges.
COEO understands how important network security is and has helped thousands of organizations improve their network security by implementing solutions such as SASE and monitoring network security to prevent vulnerabilities.
By the end of this article, you will understand what Attack Surface Management is, the challenges that exist with this strategy, and the best practices to use for Attack Surface Management to avoid these challenges.
What is Attack Surface Management?
Attack Surface Management is a network security strategy that monitors and manages network entry points where security vulnerabilities may take place. These areas are prime for malicious actors to take advantage of and penetrate your network, leading to data breaches and cyberattacks.
Attack Surface Management enables organizations to continuously scan and identify network exposure and recommend remediation steps. This helps monitor an organization’s network for potential threats.
Vulnerabilities can stem from physical IT assets, such as endpoints like laptops and mobile devices, digital assets, such as cloud infrastructure and web applications, or third-party vendors, such as cloud provider vulnerabilities.
It is important to manage all of the vulnerable areas of your network to avoid malicious actors from entering.
Attack Surface Management may seem laborious by having to monitor access points at all times, but it helps shrink the attack surface and address gaps in network security while preventing cyberattacks and data breaches.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about network security or ask any questions you may have, you can schedule an appointment:
The Challenges with Attack Surface Management
While Attack Surface Management can help monitor and manage entry points where security vulnerabilities take place, there are challenges with Attack Surface Management that your organization should be aware of. These challenges include:
Complex IT resources
One of the challenges with Attack Surface Management is the complexity of the IT infrastructure and how much surface there is to manage.
For this reason, it is important to have IT expertise managing this when it comes to monitoring and managing attack surfaces. If there is no expertise in-house, your organization might be better off outsourcing the monitoring and management of the Attack Surface Management process.
Expanding attack surface
Network attack surfaces are growing in variety and volume. This makes it increasingly challenging to monitor and manage attack points when the attack surfaces themselves are expanding and attacks are more creative.
Because of the constant increase in the size of network infrastructure, as well as the creativity of malicious actors and attackers, it can be increasingly difficult to manage and monitor the attack surfaces.
Increase in AI usage in IT
The increased use of AI in IT infrastructure can also cause challenges for Attack Surface Management. AI helps expand the attack surface of your network, making it more difficult to monitor and manage entry points.
The increase of AI in IT infrastructure can lead to APIs, data pipelines, and training environments serving as potential entry points for malicious actors to penetrate your network.
Best practices for Attack Surface Management to prevent challenges
There are many challenges with Attack Surface Management that organizations should be aware of. For this reason, it is important to understand the best practices for Attack Surface Management so you can prevent these challenges. Some of the best practices for Attack Surface Management include:
Select the right Attack Surface Management strategy for your organization
There are multiple approaches to Attack Surface Management. It is important that you choose the most appropriate strategy for your organization.
Businesses need to understand their most significant concerns and the types of attacks they most need to prevent.
External Attack Surface Management provides tools and processes that identify internet-facing assets and flag security vulnerabilities that threats can exploit.
Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management is an alternative strategy; this one focuses more on internal vulnerabilities, such as data storage in the network, as well as external vulnerabilities.
Lastly, Digital Risk Protection Services is a strategy that focuses on shielding digital assets from data breaches and business reputational harm, helping combat leaked business credentials and brand imitation attacks.
Ensure Attack Surface Management is headed by IT experts
As mentioned in one of the challenges above, it can be challenging to monitor and manage attack points within your network with little to no IT expertise.
Complex IT resources, expanding attack surfaces, and the use of AI in network infrastructure make it difficult for organizations with no IT expertise to reliably perform Attack Surface Management.
Because of this, it is important that organizations have IT experts responsible for monitoring and managing attack points within their network, whether internally or outsourced.
Determining whether Attack Surface Management is appropriate for your organization
Now you understand what Attack Surface Management is, its challenges, and the best practices to avoid these challenges.
This knowledge will help determine whether Attack Surface Management is appropriate for your organization and how to address challenges when they come up.
Organizations can no longer operate effectively with poor network security. Poor network security can lead to vulnerabilities that result in cyberattacks and data breaches, which have detrimental consequences for organizations.
The ramifications of cyberattacks and data breaches include extended network downtime, damaged business reputations, compromised data, legal consequences resulting in non-compliant industry regulations and compliance, lost customers, and lost revenue.
All of these ramifications can be detrimental to an organization, in addition to the cost of cyberattacks and data breaches, which can be hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to remediate.
For this reason, it is important for you to understand the challenges of Attack Surface Management and the best practices to avoid these challenges so you can determine whether it is appropriate for your organization and what to prepare for should these challenges happen in your organization.
COEO understands how important reliable network security is and has delivered security solutions such as SASE to thousands of organizations helping them monitor their network security.
We want you to understand the challenges of Attack Surface Management and its best practices to avoid them, so you can be prepared should these challenges take place in your organization.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about network security or ask any questions you may have, you can schedule an appointment:
Now you know the challenges of Attack Surface Management and if it is right for your organization. Read the article below to help you determine if your network is at risk:
