Attack Surface Management alone can be a useful tool for IT teams to monitor and manage their infrastructure. The real value, however, is when that data can be used to validate critical exposures. Commonly, security teams will export their ASM data into vulnerability scanners or provide results to security teams to analyze and evaluate potential risks. While this can help in improving security posture, it lacks a certain scalability. As your business grows and your attack surface evolves, how confident are you that exposures are not falling between the cracks?

Signal vs Noise

Vulnerability scanners are valuable tools that both red and blue teams are using. However, the extent of the results can be overwhelming. Prioritizing your remediation efforts simply by CVE's qualitative criticality scale will leave remediators constantly overburdened with the “everything is critical” mindset.

While teams are left sifting through noise, without appropriate automation in place, real threat signals can be left unnoticed. Attack surface data is most valuable when the following conditions are met:

  • The data is continuously current
  • Change detection triggers testing
  • Potential risks are analyzed from both vulnerability scanning and bleeding edge techniques
  • Testing teams are familiar with sneaky lateral movements on low-risk vulnerabilities
  • Testing is completed with scalable methodologies

These conditions are best met when Attack Surface Management is paired with Continuous Penetration Testing. When securing your organization, not only do you want to have a clear picture of your assets and how they are changing, but you also want to rest assured, as changes happen: penetration testing occurs. And this is just how Sprocket shares signals through the depth of all the noise.

Integrated Security & Vendor Consolidation

Establishing a mature security posture requires its fair share of planning. Whether you’re new to your organization or a veteran: revisiting the current security posture and strategizing for the future remains consistently important. As your organization grows and your attack surface evolves, new tools and methodologies will be required to both harden security and remain informed on emerging threats.

You’ve started with your internal security team who’s done an excellent job! But it’s time to advance your security posture. The biggest mistake security teams are making is managing far too many vendors. Internal teams are left scrambling to associate data from one vendor to another, stuck in cross-vendor bottlenecks, and left confused and inundated with too many cooks.

Choosing a Vendor with Room to Grow

Whether your team is ready to implement red team solutions such as continuous penetration testing or adversary simulation, or stepping into a growing posture: your best bet will be with a vendor who has room for you to grow. Sprocket Security can get you started with our Attack Surface Management product which is powered by our proprietary attack surface monitoring tools that constantly get updated as new reconnaissance methodologies become available.

The best part about augmenting your attack surface monitoring with an offensive security team is that this product is the very heartbeat of continuous penetration testing: change detection.

Continuous Penetration Testing Compliments Attack Surface Management

Continuous Penetration Testing is a hybrid offensive security solution that blends automation with expert-driven testing. As your attack surface changes or new threats emerge: expert testers will attempt to penetrate your organization’s assets given the new circumstances. These events happen all year long. Not just when you’ve cleaned up shop for picture day. (This is how legacy pentesting is conducted).

Strengthening Your Security with CPT

While using a continuous penetration testing solution, your cybersecurity will be strengthened. Offensive teams will put your defenses to the test. Attack surface reconnaissance in combination with data provided by your security team will enable offensive testers visibility into potential weaknesses across your attack surface.

While continuous penetration testing is the number one way to verify your defenses, there’s still a lot you can do internally within your blue teams. Having full visibility into the hacker’s perspective of your attack surface can mean remediating potential threats faster before they result in a breach. This is why a matured cybersecurity posture includes attack surface management alongside continuous penetration testing.

Customized Attack Scenarios & Purple Teaming

It’s no secret that identifying risk and remediating risk are two different ballparks. However, these two pillars of cybersecurity should now be completed within individual silos. The best defensive results occur when both blue and red teams work together in lock-step.

Blue teams may discover a new asset or vulnerability, which they should be able to share with their red teams to assess the likelihood of a breach. Or red teams may discover a seemingly low-risk vulnerability that could result in lateral movements that they need to alert the blue teams to.

Communication is Key

Whichever direction the conversation flows, it’s important to have a clear line of communication with your offensive security vendors. Sharing visibility into the organization’s attack surface is the perfect stage to do this. It is left no surprise to either team when assets change or are added. Additionally, matured offensive security vendors, like Sprocket Security, offer comments & correspondence across assets and findings. Remediation can go a lot more smoothly when attack surface visibility and penetration testing findings are accessible from both parties.

Holistic Reporting & Visibility

Pulling documents from various vendors and application areas can be cumbersome and reduces efficiency. When your organization utilizes attack surface management and penetration testing with a single vendor, you’ll be able to obtain a bird's-eye-view of your entire attack surface and the findings that pose the greatest risk to your business.

Sprocket offers all the data you’ll need in one easy-to-find place. You’ll be able to access metrics on key performance indicators, on-demand attestation reports, executive summaries, and findings with their associated IT assets all from the Sprocket Platform.

Looking to see what your attack surface looks like from the hacker's perspective and demo the holistic security reporting tools with Sprocket Security?

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