Exposure management vs. vulnerability management: Preventing attacks with a robust cybersecurity strategy

In today’s complex digital landscape, protecting your organization from cyber threats is more crucial than ever. Highly distributed multicloud systems and an ever-changing threat landscape facilitate potential vulnerabilities going undetected, putting organizations at risk. A robust application security strategy is vital to ensuring the safety of your organization’s data and applications. This is why exposure management is a key cornerstone of modern application security.

Exposure management offers a proactive approach to safeguarding an organization’s assets. By identifying, assessing, and mitigating potential vulnerabilities, organizations can significantly reduce the risk of an incoming successful attack. This blog delves into the key principles of this approach, how it differs from vulnerability management, and how it can help you enhance your organization’s security posture.

What is exposure management?

Exposure management is a strategic approach to cybersecurity that involves identifying potential vulnerabilities, evaluating their impact, and implementing countermeasures to protect against attacks. By concentrating on external assets, exposure management maps out the organization’s potential entry points for attackers.

The success of exposure management relies on a well-defined process that includes the following steps:

1. Identifying external-facing assets: This includes everything from websites and web applications to cloud services, APIs, and IoT devices.
2. Assessing vulnerability: Evaluate assets for known and potential vulnerabilities that could be exploited by attackers.
3. Analyzing attack vectors: Identify how attackers might exploit vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access or control.
4. Prioritizing risks: Assess the potential impact of a successful attack on each asset to determine which vulnerabilities pose the greatest threat.
5. Monitoring and alerting: Continuously monitor external assets for signs of compromise and alert teams to potential threats.

Vulnerability management vs. exposure management

Vulnerability management focuses on finding and fixing security weaknesses within an organization’s systems. Exposure management takes a broader approach, encompassing vulnerability management and the overall risk assessment of an organization’s entire external footprint. Although vulnerability management and exposure management share some similarities, they differ in their scope and objectives.

Essentially, managing vulnerabilities is a component of exposure management. To effectively protect against cyber threats and strengthen your organization’s security posture, a combination of managing both exposures and vulnerabilities is ideal.

Challenges

Exposure management, while essential for safeguarding organizations’ applications and data, presents several challenges, including the following:

• Overwhelming complexity: Modern IT environments are increasingly complex, with numerous interconnected systems, applications, and devices. This complexity can make it difficult to accurately identify and assess all potential vulnerabilities.
• Dynamic attack surface: The organization’s attack surface is constantly evolving as new assets are added, removed, or modified. This makes it challenging to keep track of all potential entry points for attackers.
• Limited visibility: Many organizations lack complete visibility into their IT infrastructure, making it difficult to identify and address hidden vulnerabilities.
• Resource constraints: Managing exposures can be resource-intensive, requiring specialized skills, tools, and processes.
• Evolving threat landscape: Cyber threats are constantly evolving, making it difficult to stay ahead of new attack techniques and vulnerabilities.
• Integration challenges: Integrating exposure management tools and processes with existing security infrastructure can be complex and time-consuming.
• False positives and negatives: Vulnerability scanning tools can sometimes generate false positives, leading to unnecessary remediation efforts, or false negatives, which can leave organizations vulnerable to exploitation.

Despite these challenges, effective exposure management is essential for protecting organizations from cyber threats. By addressing these challenges and implementing best practices, organizations can improve their security posture and reduce the risk of a successful cyber-attack.

Impact

Exposure management helps organizations strengthen their overall security posture by identifying and mitigating potential weaknesses. By proactively identifying and addressing vulnerabilities, organizations can significantly reduce their chances of falling victim to cyberattacks.

Moreover, as regulatory initiatives go into effect to mitigate the risk associated with the ever-evolving threat landscape, organizations are encouraged to drive a risk-based approach to application security. Many industry regulations and standards—including the SEC cybersecurity mandate, NIS2 Directive, and DORA—require organizations to implement robust security measures. Exposure management can help ensure compliance with these requirements.

By focusing on the most critical vulnerabilities, exposure management can also help organizations allocate their security resources more effectively and efficiently. Finally, a strong exposure management posture can help increase organizations’ confidence in their overall application security approach, keeping their data and systems safeguarded from potential attacks.

How does exposure management enhance application security?

Exposure management plays a pivotal role in bolstering application security by providing a holistic view of potential vulnerabilities and risks. Here are some ways that the approach enhances overall application security:

• Comprehensive view: Provides a holistic understanding of the application’s security posture, including dependencies and third-party components.
• Prioritization: Helps focus resources on the most critical vulnerabilities and exposures.
• Proactive defense: Enables organizations to anticipate and address threats before they can be exploited.
• Compliance: Supports adherence to industry regulations and standards.

Building a robust cybersecurity strategy

When combined with vulnerability management, exposure management is a critical aspect of an organization’s overall application security strategy. By proactively identifying, assessing, and mitigating vulnerabilities, organizations can significantly reduce their risk of cyberattacks and protect their valuable assets. As the threat landscape continues to evolve, it is essential that organizations invest in effective exposure management solutions to ensure their ongoing security.

Dynatrace Application Security offers a comprehensive approach to exposure management by providing several key capabilities. The platform offers real-time insights into potential vulnerabilities and security threats by continuously monitoring applications and infrastructure. With Runtime Vulnerability Analytics, Dynatrace automatically identifies vulnerabilities across the entire application stack, including third-party components and dependencies.

The platform’s risk assessment capability assesses the potential impact of vulnerabilities on the application and business, helping organizations prioritize remediation efforts. Auto-remediation reduces the manual workload on security teams while threat intelligence helps them stay informed about emerging threats and vulnerabilities.

Finally, as a unified observability and security platform, Dynatrace integrates with other security tools to provide a holistic view of an organization’s security posture.