What is Exposure Management?

As companies update and expand their IT infrastructure, they introduce new vulnerabilities and attack vectors. At the same time, cyber threat actors are refining their techniques and developing new ones, identifying new risks to existing assets.

Exposure management is the practice of mapping the company’s digital attack surface and developing and implementing strategies to address these security risks. Exposure management is a critical component of a corporate cybersecurity program.

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What is Exposure Management?

The Role of Exposure Management in Building Cybersecurity Programs

The purpose of a cybersecurity program is to manage an organization’s exposure to potential cyber threats. This includes both proactively attempting to identify and close security holes before they can be exploited by an attacker and reactively identifying, blocking, and remediating ongoing attacks.

Exposure management is an important part of an organization’s proactive cybersecurity operations. By mapping its attack surface and identifying vulnerabilities in it, an organization can determine where and how it is most likely to be attacked. This information informs cybersecurity operations by indicating where an organization should take action to address the potential cyber risks to the company.

How to Build an Exposure Management Program

To get started with an exposure management program, follow these steps.

Audit Existing Security Visibility Architecture

Many organizations have at least partial visibility into their digital attack surface. For example, an organization may run periodic vulnerability scans and penetration tests or maintain an inventory of the hardware and software used by the organization.

The first step in developing an exposure management program is performing an audit of the company’s existing exposure management architecture and programs. For example, the organization should determine which solutions it has and the level of integration that exists between them. A comprehensive array of security monitoring solutions provides little benefit if they are siloed and only offer partial visibility into an organization’s attack surface.

Identify Visibility Gaps

After determining the scope of its existing security monitoring architecture, an organization can start to assess its effectiveness at monitoring potential exposures. This involves determining what the organization needs to have visibility into, what it can currently see, and any gaps between the two.

This step depends on a clear understanding of an organization’s existing IT and security architectures. The company needs to know what IT systems it has, and how each of its existing risk monitoring solutions and processes covers them. Potential gaps not only include overlooked systems but also failing to effectively monitor for certain risks on a system potentially exposed to them.

Evaluate and Improve Processes

After identifying existing visibility gaps, the organization can take steps to close these gaps. Then, based on the improved visibility, it can work to reevaluate and improve its existing risk remediation processes.

For example, if the corporate monitoring infrastructure was previously siloed or included visibility gaps, then greater visibility may unveil new, significant vulnerabilities. Eliminating silos and improving security visibility might also provide opportunities to streamline and automate the exposure management process.

Define and Assess Metrics for Remediation

If an organization currently lacks metrics for its remediation process — such as the mean time to remediation for critical vulnerabilities — this is a good time to create them. If metrics exist, the organization should review them in light of changes to its security monitoring architecture.

These metrics should be regularly audited and assessed. This helps to ensure that an organization’s exposure management program is meeting the needs of the business.

Benefits of Exposure Management

Exposure management is designed to take vulnerability management to the next level. Some benefits it can provide include the following:

  • Greater Visibility: Exposure management is centered on achieving better visibility of an organization’s digital attack surface. This is invaluable for vulnerability detection and remediation but has other IT and security benefits as well.
  • Reduced Risk: Exposure management optimizes risk management through increased visibility and automation. By closing more security gaps earlier, it reduces an organization’s risk of cyberattacks.
  • Cost Savings: It’s always cheaper to prevent a cyberattack from happening than to remediate it after the fact. Effective exposure management can create security cost savings by closing security gaps before they can be exploited.

Choosing an Exposure Management Solution

Choosing an Exposure

Exposure management is designed to streamline and improve corporate risk management practices. By integrating security visibility and automating risk management where possible, an organization can more proactively protect itself against cyberattacks.

Check Point Harmony Endpoint, a market-leading endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution, now integrates with Ivanti, enabling it to discover, manage, secure, and service IT assets. This endpoint security management functionality supports exposure management by enabling users to quickly detect vulnerabilities and remediate those weaknesses, enterprise-wide, in a single click.

An effective exposure management program makes cybersecurity cheaper and more cost-effective. To learn more about how Harmony Endpoint can help, sign up for a free demo today.

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