Gartner® Emerging Tech Impact Radar Security Report: BreachLock and Exposure Management

As organizations grapple with the increasing sophistication of cyber threats across the globe, innovative approaches and cutting-edge technologies are paramount to safeguarding their digital assets. Gartner®, a globally recognized technology and cybersecurity research and consulting firm, just released a new report – ‘Gartner® Emerging Tech Impact Radar: Security.’

The report delves into the latest developments in the world of cybersecurity and highlights the emerging technologies making a significant impact in helping organizations build and maintain cyber resilience. Among the companies mentioned under Exposure Management in the report is BreachLock, a global leader in PTaaS, penetration testing services, and EASM, two of the technologies that are advancing exposure management programs.
In this blog, we will explore the key insights of Gartner’s report and unveil the pivotal role BreachLock plays in the cybersecurity technologies landscape.

Understanding Gartner’s Emerging Tech Impact Radar: Security

Gartner is known for providing in-depth analyses and expert insights into the technology and cybersecurity world. Their ‘Emerging Tech Impact Radar’ reports serve as a compass for organizations seeking to incorporate emerging technologies and services to expand growth opportunities linked to proactive security. The ‘Gartner® Emerging Tech Impact Radar: Security’ report can be leveraged as a roadmap for businesses navigating the intricate landscape of cybersecurity and implementing new and innovative technologies to improve their defenses.
This report assesses a range of categories with the following emerging technologies converging to advance exposure management programs and the roles they play. We will elaborate on these tools further in the blog.

• Digital risk protection services (DRPS)
• External Attack Surface Management (EASM)
• Cyberasset attack surface management (CAASM)
• Breach and attack simulation (BAS)
• Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS)
• Automated penetration testing and red teaming tools
• Vulnerability assessment (VA) and vulnerability prioritization technology (VPT)

As security and risk managers (SRM) leaders struggle to prioritize risk reduction actions, leaving gaps where they feel less control, exposure management reduces the challenges organizations face inventorying, prioritizing, and validating threat exposure due to a rapidly expanding attack surface where traditional vulnerability management tools fail.

Organizations are embracing broader continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) programs as SRM professionals, rather than simply processing vulnerabilities with assessment tools. With a focus on visibility, end users are gaining an awareness of where risks are, and plan to respond to threats even if the organization has no way to reduce exposure to them. Monitoring and responding to issues and risks identified is a critical part of managing exposure. Validating that exposures exist, and controls are functioning is useful, but it is essential that organizations are also prepared to act.

With exposure management programs, organizations will be better prepared to reorient their priorities and segregate these priorities into three distinct questions:

1. What does my organization look like from an attacker’s point of view?
2. What configuration has my organization set that will make it vulnerable to an attack?
3. How would our defensive controls cope and how would response processes perform?

The technologies that support exposure management processes will enable organizations to better scale their ability to identify the likelihood of exploitation based on visibility on the attack surface. Exposure management will validate whether attacks will be successful and the security controls that can assist with preventing them.

What is Exposure Management?

CTEM is part of a broader security process and architecture. It interplays with cyber-risk management, threat detection and response, and security posture optimization. Exposure management is a set of processes and technologies that allow enterprises to continually evaluate visibility and validate the accessibility and vulnerability of an enterprise’s digital assets. Exposure management is governed by an effective continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) program. Exposure management is delivered in five stages: scoping, discovery, prioritization, validation, and mobilization.

Organizations building an exposure management program leverage tools to inventory cyberassets, identify exposures, simulate or test attacks, and mobilize a response. Gartner describes exposure management as a set of processes and technologies that allow enterprises to continually evaluate the visibility and validate the accessibility and vulnerability of an enterprise’s digital assets.

What are the Five Core Stages of Exposure Management?

Exposure management programs’ five core stages are defined as follows:

1. Scoping: Identify and define the scope of digital assets that need protection to solidify a clear view of what needs safeguarding.
2. Discovery: Assess and inventory cyber assets to understand what assets are in play and connected to one another.
3. Prioritization: Prioritize assets based on their value and potential impact on the business.
4. Validation: Simulate attacks and test to validate the effectiveness of security measures.
5. Mobilization: When vulnerabilities are identified and validated, organizations must mobilize a response, which may include implementing patches, enhancing security protocols, or taking other actions to mitigate risks.

Key Technologies Identified by Gartner in Exposure Management Category

Let’s explore the technologies that Gartner identifies as some of the key technologies that are advancing exposure management:

1. Digital Risk Protection Services (DRPS): These services are designed to help organizations monitor and protect their digital footprint, identifying risks before they turn into vulnerabilities. DRPS can serve a wide range of functions like brand monitoring, dark web scanning, and social media threat detection
2. External Attack Surface Management (EASM): EASM solutions assist in evaluating organizations’ external attack surfaces, uncovering potential weak points that attackers could exploit. EASM tools scan the dark web for compromised credentials, identify shadow IT assets, categorize assets, and more.
3. Cyberasset Attack Surface Management (CAASM): CAASM tools focus on managing the attack surface of an organization’s digital assets, ensuring that vulnerabilities are identified and addressed. They do this by creating an inventory of all digital assets, including servers, databases, and cloud instances, and often also scan them for vulnerabilities.
4. Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS): BAS solutions simulate real-world cyberattacks to assess an organization’s preparedness and response capabilities. These simulated attacks can range from ransomware attacks to phishing campaign simulations.
5. Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS): PTaaS allows organizations to conduct regular penetration testing to identify vulnerabilities and assess their security posture continuously. Penetration testing identifies weaknesses from a hacker’s perspective and allows organizations to remediate and re-test vulnerabilities once they’ve been patched to improve their security posture and validate fixes.
6. Automated Penetration Testing and Red Teaming Tools: These tools automate penetration testing and red teaming activities to save time and resources. Automated penetration testing and red teaming tools enable organizations to identify vulnerabilities in real time to narrow their exposure windows.
7. Vulnerability Assessment (VA) and Vulnerability Prioritization Technology (VPT): VA and VPT tools are essential for identifying vulnerabilities and prioritizing them based on potential risk by conducting periodic scans of an organization’s network.

BreachLock’s Role in Exposure Management

BreachLock finds its place in the exposure management section of Gartner’s report due to its influence on several technologies and services. Among the key technologies mentioned in the exposure management category, BreachLock is a leader in the following:

1. Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS)
2. Penetration testing services
3. External Attack Surface Management (EASM)

BreachLock delivers a unique risk discovery and exposure program with automated and human-driven solutions that are flexible and versatile and that consolidate assessments into one integrated platform from attack surface management (ASM/EASM), Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaas), and Red Teaming as a Service (RTaaS). The BreachLock AI-powered technology enables the ingestion of exposure data tens of thousands of pentests, vulnerability scans, and our own logs, to not only accelerate the prioritization and remediation of vulnerabilities, but to discover patterns and anomalies that humans would never detect. This innovation has evolved traditional human-driven pentesting by providing enterprises of all sizes with cost-effective solutions that fit their business and security needs.

Due to continuous and more sophisticated cyber threats, enterprises will shift from threat management to exposure management to be more proactive instead of reactive in addressing potential threats. Resource challenges, uncertain economic times, and supply chain risk are three of the biggest issues impacting cybersecurity spending feasibility. The automation of vulnerability assessment and security control validation can enhance productivity and scale tasks and workflows for enterprises. This creates an opportunity for organizations to better manage risk and exposure, prioritize vulnerabilities, maintain compliance, and understand what new capabilities their business requires – whether automated penetration testing and red teaming or attack surface management – to test the efficacy of their security controls.

About BreachLock

BreachLock is a global leader in PTaaS, penetration testing services, and EASM. BreachLock offers automated, AI-powered, and human-delivered solutions in one integrated platform based on a standardized built-in framework that enables consistent and regular benchmarks of attack tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), security controls, and processes to deliver enhanced predictability, consistency, and accurate results in real-time, every time.