If your organization has poor network security, your network may have vulnerabilities that leave it open to cyberattacks and data breaches.
Cyberattacks and data breaches lead to adverse consequences such as damaged business reputations, network downtime, lost or compromised data, and lost customers and revenue.
Cyberattacks and data breaches can also cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair a network. These costs can have severe consequences for any business, often making it difficult to recover fully.
Understanding what Attack Surface Management is and whether it would be beneficial for your organization may help you improve network security and prevent network vulnerabilities like cyberattacks that can lead to these detrimental consequences.
COEO understands how important network security is and has helped thousands of organizations improve their network security with network solutions like SASE to prevent security vulnerabilities and cyberattacks.
By the end of this article, you will understand what Attack Surface Management is, why it’s important, and whether it could be beneficial for your organization.
What is Attack Surface Management?
Attack Surface Management refers to managing network entry points where security vulnerabilities can occur. These areas are vulnerable for malicious actors to take advantage of and penetrate a network, leading to data breaches and cyberattacks.
Attack Surface Management enables organizations to continuously scan and identify network exposures and recommend remediation steps. This helps monitor a network for potential threats.
Vulnerabilities can stem from physical IT assets within an organization, digital assets such as data exposed via the internet, or third-party vendors’ infrastructure.
It is important to manage these vulnerable areas of your network to prevent malicious actors from entering.
Physical attack surfaces include endpoints such as desktops, laptops, and other devices connected to your organization’s network, as well as servers, server rooms, enterprise storage systems, and operational technology.
Digital attack surfaces include cloud infrastructure, application programming interfaces, internet-facing interfaces, misconfigured software, SaaS, and web applications.
Third-party attack surfaces include software dependencies, cloud provider vulnerabilities, and vendor-managed assets.
Additionally, human and social engineering can serve as an attack surface that malicious actors target and these include vulnerabilities like business email being compromised and phishing links and emails sent to employees
While Attack Surface Management requires significant effort to constantly monitor access points, it helps shrink the attack surface and address gaps in network security, thus, 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:
Importance of Attack Surface Management
Remote and hybrid work environments that became common following the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated digital transformation and increased the attack surfaces that malicious actors can use to penetrate the network.
The ever-changing and expanding nature of IT increases the attack surface and, as a result, increases the need for Attack Surface Management among other important network security solutions, such as SASE and SD-WAN.
While Attack Surface Management does not automatically mitigate potential threats found in your network, the continuous monitoring of Attack Surface Management puts your cybersecurity team on proactive footing.
This enables your team to address network security vulnerabilities and receive insight into what to do to prevent penetration and overall network damage.
Attack Surface Management also ensures that your organization maintains compliance with industry regulations. Many organizations have industry regulations, such as HIPAA in the healthcare industry, that need to be managed to ensure that digital assets and your network are secure.
Additionally, network vulnerabilities can lead to cyberattacks and data breaches in organizations that do not practice Attack Surface Management. Cyberattacks and data breaches can also result in damaged business reputations, lost customers, and reduced revenue.
The cost of cyberattacks, data breaches, and legal remediation caused by non-compliance can be hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, and Attack Surface Management often helps prevent these expenditures.
Would Attack Surface management be beneficial for your organization?
Now you understand what Attack Surface Management is and why it’s important. However, you should also understand whether it would be beneficial for your organization. This will help determine whether your organization should implement Attack Surface Management.
If your organization operates in a remote or hybrid work environment and has employees accessing the network from these remote locations, Attack Surface Management may be beneficial to ensure there are no vulnerabilities within the network.
If your organization has experienced network security breaches in the past and is looking to better monitor potential vulnerabilities and threats in the future, Attack Surface Management may help you achieve these objectives.
Attack Surface Management may also be beneficial if your organization's network security needs to be compliant with standard regulations for your industry.
However, if your organization does not have the bandwidth to constantly monitor and manage network security or needs more advanced security features, Attack Surface Management may not achieve your objectives. In this case, your organization should evaluate a network security solution such as SASE to automate security.
Determining whether Attack Surface Management would be beneficial for your organization
Now that you understand what attack surface management is, why it’s important, and whether attack surface management would be beneficial for your organization. This will help you determine whether you should implement Attack Surface Management into your organization.
No organization can rely on poor network security resulting in security vulnerabilities. Network vulnerabilities can lead to cyberattacks and data breaches that cause detrimental consequences.
Ramifications such as damaged business reputations, lost customers and revenue, and legal consequences as a result of non- compliance can all result from cyberattacks and data breaches.
For this reason, Attack Surface Management is an excellent strategy to improve network security and avoid data breaches and cyberattacks and the consequences that come with them.
COEO understands how important network security is to an organization that relies on the network to perform daily work tasks and has helped monitor and manage the network security for thousands of organizations.
We want you to understand what Attack Surface Management is and whether it would be beneficial to improve network security.
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:
