Risk-based Prioritization: Why Context is So Important

Given the reality of the expanding attack surface, it is impractical for organizations to attempt to patch every exposure and vulnerability, which is why prioritization is so important. It is essential to first determine which vulnerabilities and threats merit priority and resources based on risk criticality. Adopting the attacker’s perspective is crucial in this prioritization process, as it allows organizations to validate the likelihood of an exposure being exploited. It is an integral aspect of the Attack Surface Management process, but gaining an attacker’s view of your attack surface alone is not enough.

To achieve a realistic and comprehensive view of your attack surface and how to defend against a potential threat, evidence-based context is necessary. This means that enterprises must go deeper to assess the attractiveness of their assets to an attacker, the ease of their exploitation, the attack paths that can be used to exploit vulnerabilities in these assets, and the potential impact an exploit would have on the organization’s operations. This rich context should be based on evidence gathered through real TTPs and attacks, years of aggregated data through security testing methods, and technologies, such as AI/ML, that can uncover vulnerability patterns and anomalies faster and more accurately, potentially predicting an exploit before it happens. All of this leads to risk-based prioritization – that is risk identified based on real evidence to ensure the most critical vulnerabilities are tackled first.

What Context is and Why It Matters

Context, as it applies to Attack Surface Management, is an in-depth understanding and assessment of the risk and criticality surrounding an exposed asset and associated vulnerability. It goes beyond the initial discovery of an asset or identification of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) to consider factors such as the level of attractiveness of the asset for an attacker, the ease of exploitation, and its impact on the business itself.

This rich context matters because a basic inventory of every cyber asset in an organization can yield an overwhelming amount of true and false positives that are impossible to parse and fail to deliver any meaningful and actionable insights. The exposed assets and their vulnerabilities discovered during the discovery phase of Attack Surface Management must be evaluated based on the context surrounding them to determine if they are relevant to the enterprise. This criteria is usually understood prior to testing and involves establishing the risk tolerance of the organization, a criticality profile, and context that is deemed important to determine in order to mount a proper defense.

For example, a breach of non-sensitive data, such as usernames, email addresses, and publicly shared content, on an online blogging platform may impact user trust but typically isn’t subject to the stringent privacy regulations that govern financial and healthcare data. However, in the healthcare industry, even data categorized as non-sensitive, which may not directly disclose specific medical conditions or treatment details, is subject to strict privacy regulations such as HIPAA in the United States and can have way more serious implications. So, while any data breach is significant from a reputational perspective, the interest of attackers in targeting assets and vulnerabilities hinges on their relevance to the organization’s core operations and data assets. Simply put, context helps organizations prioritize which exposures and vulnerabilities must be dealt with first based on the possibility and probability of exploitation and the organization’s risk appetite.

Benefits of Risk-based Prioritization in Attack Surface Management

Gartner’s “Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2024: Continuous Threat Exposure Management” report forecasts that by 2026, organizations prioritizing continuous threat exposure management, with Attack Surface Management and risk-based prioritization at its core, will see a two-thirds reduction in breaches.

Here’s how risk-based prioritization enables organizations to reduce their attack surface and manage it more effectively:

1. Strategic decision-making: Risk-based prioritization based on contextual insights enables organizations to choose their battles wisely and make strategic decisions regarding resource allocation, vulnerability remediation, security investments, and overall risk management strategies.
2. Effective resource allocation: By narrowing down the attack surface to high-impact areas, organizations can invest their resources — budget, time, and personnel — where they matter most. They can make sure that they invest in security measures that yield the greatest risk reduction relative to their cost.
3. Security testing prioritization: Risk-based prioritization in Attack Surface Management can guide subsequent security strategies, such as pentesting and red teaming exercises, to focus first on threats and vulnerabilities that have the highest potential impact on business operations. It ensures that security and business objectives are always aligned.
4. Adaptive risk mitigation: Prioritization and risk scoring change as context evolves, allowing organizations to adjust their priorities and investments to mitigate new and emerging threats effectively.
5. Compliance assurance: It highlights vulnerabilities posing the greatest compliance risk, helping organizations to address them promptly and maintain regulatory compliance to avoid costly penalties.

How BreachLock Establishes Rich Context for Risk-based Prioritization

Keeping up with the tide, BreachLock’s Attack Surface Management offers risk-based prioritization of assets and vulnerabilities based on evidence-based context as opposed to merely providing siloed and static asset inventories. Being a market leader in offensive security practices, BreachLock Attack Surface Management provides enriched contextual insights across the entire attack surface with its AI technology and years of aggregated threat intelligence. These insights enable granular and evidence-based prioritization of risks and exposures based on their actual risk to an organization.

BreachLock’s Attack Surface Management solution excels in establishing historical and real-world context for risk-based prioritization and scoring in ASM. Here’s how we implement comprehensive risk-based prioritization of threats and vulnerabilities across vast and complex attack surfaces:

1. Extensive security testing experience: Over the years, BreachLock has conducted continuous security testing, including hundreds of thousands of penetration tests, ASM scans, and automated testing, across diverse industries. BreachLock’s Attack Surface Management solution leverages the wealth of accumulated data, which provides comprehensive intelligence on vulnerabilities, exploits, threats, and remediation best practices, enabling real-world context and real-time inferences for precise risk-based prioritization.
2. AI-powered technology: BreachLock ASM utilizes AI technology driven by Natural Language Processing (NLP) to swiftly identify patterns and anomalies and discover unique attack paths and TTPs. AI-enabled rapid identification of emerging threats and potential attack vectors is a crucial step for prioritizing vulnerabilities and threats based on their relevance to the organization’s risk profile.
3. Prioritization based on severity and impact: Once exposed assets and attacker entry points have been identified, the BreachLock CSV Platform prioritizes vulnerabilities and risks according to their severity and potential impact on your enterprise’s security and business operations. This ensures that resources are allocated effectively to mitigate the most critical threats.
4. Custom risk scoring: BreachLock’s Critical Scoring employs Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), and known breach data to calculate custom risk scores. This comprehensive approach assigns a much more accurate criticality score to assets and associated vulnerabilities, revealing top priorities for remediation.

BreachLock Attack Surface Management for both internal and external attack surfaces identifies and prioritizes risk and exposures at their most critical attacker entry points on the basis of actual risk. Schedule a discovery call with BreachLock today!

About BreachLock

BreachLock is a global leader offering human-delivered, AI-powered, and automated solutions for Attack Surface Management (ASM), Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) and Automated Pentesting (APT) and Red Teaming as a Service (RTaaS). Collectively, these solutions go beyond providing an attacker’s view of common vulnerabilities and exposures to provide enterprises with evidence-based risk across their entire attack surface to determine how they will respond to an attack.

Know Your Risk. Accelerate risk prioritization and remediation accuracy across the entire security ecosystem with BreachLock.