What Is the Attack Surface Management (ASM) Lifecycle?
Attack surface management is the systematic process of identifying, assessing, and securing an organization's digital assets and entry points susceptible to cyberattacks. Unlike other cybersecurity approaches, an attack surface management solution considers security risks proactively and from an attacker's perspective.
The attack surface management lifecycle facilitates more aggressive tactics that seek out vulnerabilities on the digital attack surface to enhance the overall security posture. This lifecycle approach is crucial because it provides a dynamic framework to help security teams proactively detect and mitigate cyber risk.
The 6 Stages of Cyberattacks
Before delving into the details of the attack surface management lifecycle, it is worthwhile to understand how threat actors assess and exploit an organization's risk base. Knowledge of the six stages of a cyber attack provides context to the four lifecycle steps and how they can thwart an attacker at various points.
- Reconnaissance—research, identify and select targets (e.g., on-premise digital assets, an internet-facing asset, data in cloud environments, or another external attack surface with public-facing entry points) that will allow them to meet their objectives.
- Weaponization and delivery: Determine which methods to deliver malicious payloads (e.g., ransomware).
- Exploitation—deploy an exploit against vulnerable applications or systems to exploit initial entry points into the organization.
- Installation—Install malware to conduct further operations, such as maintaining access, persistence, and escalating privileges.
- Command and control—Establish a command channel to communicate and pass information back and forth between the infected devices and their infrastructure (e.g., to share surveillance information, remotely control systems, or execute data breaches).
- Actions on the objective—act upon their motivations to achieve their goal.
4 Stages of the Attack Surface Management Lifecycle
The attack surface management lifecycle comprises four steps or stages that security teams follow to protect the digital attack service. It is a continuous risk assessment process to facilitate vulnerability management and enhance organizational cybersecurity.
The proactive approach of the attack surface management lifecycle helps identify the entire asset inventory, especially those at high risk and unknown assets, to allow security teams to remediate issues and improve security ratings.
Stage 1: Asset Discovery and Classification
Attack surface management solutions identify and map systems and applications using automated asset discovery tools and techniques. These include those that are part of third-party, external-facing cloud bases, remote and on-premise endpoints, and users’ devices (i.e., bring your device or BYOD). Specialized external attack surface management (EASM) is sometimes used to discover third-party digital assets across multi-cloud environments.
Attack surface management solutions are adept at overcoming the challenges of uncovering unauthorized or unknown assets. ASM often leverages many of the same advanced reconnaissance techniques as a would-be attacker. These systems can continue to scan for digital assets, frequently identifying them in real time.
Once identified, digital assets are cataloged in a detailed inventory that includes hardware, software, applications, data storage devices, and every internet-facing asset. The inventory is classified based on criticality, sensitivity, and potential risk exposure. Continuous monitoring and regular updating of the inventory are essential to ensure that the attack surface management process remains effective.
Stage 2: Risk Assessment and Vulnerability Management
With a clear view of all assets, organizations can conduct a comprehensive risk assessment to identify potential attack vectors, such as outdated software, misconfigurations, or unsecured endpoints.
Several different methods are used to analyze and assess identified assets for vulnerabilities. These methods include automated vulnerability scanning, penetration testing (pen testing), configuration audits, software composition analysis, and threat intelligence integration. This gives security teams visibility into cyber risk factors, such as software flaws, misconfigurations, and known vulnerabilities.
Attack surface management solutions use threat modeling to analyze attack vectors to assess the likelihood of it being targeted for an attack and the potential impact. Threat modeling helps security teams narrow the scope of threats to a specific system and prioritize them. It gives them insights that save time and allow for speedy remediation of priority threats.
The information provided by attack management solutions and contextual prioritization improves vulnerability management by guiding security teams in determining the best approach for remediation.
Security teams can use risk assessment and contextual data to plan cyber risk remediation based on prioritization criteria, such as exploitability, impact, and previous attacks. This is important because more vulnerabilities are often identified than resources available to fix them quickly.
Stage 3: Implementing Remediation Measures
The mapping and contextualization of the attack surface are used to direct remediation efforts. Based on priorities, automated and manual attack surface management tactics are used. Attack surface management solutions help security teams determine a workflow to remediate risks and provide tools that automate some tasks, such as:
- Configuration updates
- Implementation of data encryption
- Installation of patches and updates
- Ongoing asset identification and associated risk assessments
- Remediation controls
- Retiring orphaned domains
- Scanning third-party assets for risks and weaknesses
- System debugging
Several manual tactics are used for remediation to find issues that automated tools can miss. These tactics include:
- Expert analysis by skilled security teams to dig into complex threats
- Human-led forensic analysis to understand the nature and impact of data breaches
- Manual audits and reviews of systems, policies, and procedures
- Regular manual penetration testing
In addition, remediation can involve broader measures. These include implementing least privilege access, multi factor authentication (MFA), and training and awareness programs reinforcing the importance of following security practices.
Digital attack surface remediation efforts are executed by several different teams, including:
- Security teams—handle risk and vulnerability management.
- IT operations teams—make updates to affected systems.
- Development teams—incorporate insights about attack vectors into their software development lifecycle (SDLC) as they build, update, and maintain digital assets.
Stage 4: Continuous Improvement and Adaptation
Attack surface management is an ongoing process. The steps detailed above should be repeated continuously to ensure the early detection of changes in the environment that can introduce new attack vectors and evolving attacker tactics.
Among the attack surface management tools that support ongoing monitoring for new vulnerabilities and threats are:
- Configuration management tools—detect and rectify misconfigurations in network devices and systems according to predefined security policies.
- Intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS)— continuously monitor for suspicious activities and can automatically block or alert about potential threats.
- Patch management systems— automatically detect outdated software and apply necessary patches and updates to close security gaps.
- Security information and event management (SIEM) systems—aggregate and analyze data from various sources, automating alerting and response processes based on identified threats.
- Vulnerability scanners—scan systems and applications for known vulnerabilities, providing regular updates and alerts.
Continuous monitoring enables attack surface management to detect and assess new vulnerabilities and attack vectors in real time. These alerts give security teams the information they need to launch immediate and effective remediation responses. In addition, environments can be adapted to better prepare for defense against evolving and zero-day threats.
Strategies to Complement the ASM Lifecycle
The attack surface management (ASM) lifecycle is critical to a strong cybersecurity posture. However, it's essential to recognize that ASM alone is not enough to protect your organization entirely.
Following are some strategies that can be used to complement the ASM lifecycle and further strengthen your security:
Attack Surface Reduction (ASR)
Attack surface reduction (ASR) is a crucial part of the attack surface management process that involves implementing strategies to minimize the number of potential entry points for an attacker.
Key tactics include requiring multiple forms of verification before granting access (e.g., multi-factor authentication), keeping software and systems up-to-date with the latest patches (e.g., patch management), and limiting user access rights only to what is strictly necessary for their role (e.g., the principle of least privilege, PoLP).
Cyber Attack Surface Management (CASM)
Cyber attack surface management integrates with existing data sources to provide organizations with a continuously updated, unified view of their entire attack surface. This gives security teams the insights to understand their asset inventory and prioritize remediation based on contextual data.
CASM addresses system blindspots and compliance issues with its comprehensive visibility and continuous monitoring and management of these assets. These capabilities ensure compliance with security policies and compliance standards.
External Attack Surface Management (EASM)
External attack surface management (EASM) identifies and secures an organization’s internet-facing assets, preventing cyber threats from outside the internal network. The process identifies all public-facing systems, services, and endpoints, including websites, web applications, servers, and cloud-based resources.
EASM also analyzes these external assets for weaknesses, misconfigurations, or outdated components that threat actors could exploit. This continuous monitoring of the internet-facing attack surface allows security teams to detect new emerging risks.
Digital Risk Protection Services (DRPS)
Digital risk protection services are specialized cybersecurity solutions that focus on identifying, monitoring, and mitigating digital risks outside the traditional security perimeter. It encompasses threat intelligence, brand protection, data leakage detection, fraud and phishing detection, and reputation monitoring. With DRPS, security teams can extend their cyber risk vulnerability management beyond their internal network.
Challenges that the ASM Lifecycle Addresses
Addressing Cloud-Based Attack Vectors
The attack surface management lifecycle addresses many challenges, especially managing cloud-based attack vectors that span complex multi-cloud environments. It provides tools and processes to help security teams gain comprehensive visibility across cloud environments.
This enables more thorough identification and management of assets in multi-cloud and hybrid cloud service models, including SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS.
IoT and Remote Workforce Considerations
Attack surface management solutions address IoT and remote workforce considerations. Both remote workforces and IoT devices have contributed to expanding perimeters and attack surfaces.
The attack management lifecycle helps security teams monitor these distributed users and devices. It also facilitates the management of security protections to mitigate their risks. This includes managing endpoint security and continuously monitoring and updating security measures across the sprawling IoT and remote worker landscape.
Evolving Threat Landscape
Following the attack surface management lifecycle stages expedites the detection of and response to evolving and emerging threats. Continuous monitoring provides insights that identify current vulnerabilities and anticipate future threats. This enables a proactive cybersecurity approach that keeps security teams ahead of threats.
These capabilities are supported by threat intelligence about emerging threats, attack patterns, and threat actors. It also leverages ethical hackers, who provide a different view than automated systems. Their simulations of cyberattacks find attack vectors before threat actors can exploit them.
