What is a Continuous Threat Exposure Management Program?

Every security leader deserves a robust, well-defined vulnerability management protocol to protect systems, data, and users from an impactful, expensive cyber-attack.

With the ever-evolving cyber threat landscape, CISOs and security operations centers need advanced strategies that can accelerate proactive remediation and mitigation of critical vulnerabilities on their attack surface. Threat actors who have gotten smarter and faster in recent years has inspired organizations of all sizes to review legacy systems, current governance, and security posture to align with the latest recommended industry gold standards.

As the touchpoints for attacks have grown due to the digitization and adoption of cloud technologies, so has the attack surface. This evolving attack surface, comprised of vulnerable systems, breached data, and rogue assets, has driven the need for a consistent and continuous security strategy aimed at continuously managing threat exposure with speed and precision. Security leaders are taking notice, as its efficacy and streamlined approach improves cyber resilience by tackling the most critical risks that require rapid remediation first.

Why shift to a Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) program?

A Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) program involves the continual monitoring of the external surfaces of the organization, assessing their vulnerabilities, and taking appropriate actions for reducing security risks. Robust remediation plans aligned with the exposed surface vulnerability must be implemented to safeguard the organization’s digital and physical assets.

In addition to being an effective breach prevention solution, building a CTEM program is a transformative process for organizations that builds in a frictionless experience for cross-functional teams involved with cyber resilience. CTEM provides a key framework useful for long-term strategic planning to meet the organization’s IT security goals that brings together IT, InfoSec, Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), Development, Operations, Procurement, Executives, the Board, etc. It’s so effective that Gartner Research has identified CTEM as one of top five priorities for CISOs to successfully manage the modern enterprise attack surface, reduce alert fatigue, and improve cyber risk management in 2023. The long-term cyber resilience that EASM can provide is significant, according to Gartner Research’s analysts: “By 2026, organizations prioritizing… a continuous exposure management program will be 3x less likely to suffer from a breach.”

The Five Stages for a CTEM Program

The CTEM program features five different stages to enhance and enforce the organization’s security policies proactively with a focus on vulnerability management. With the focus on threat exposures and prioritized mitigation, decision-makers and cross-functional stakeholders are able to overcome organizational silos to drive security goals using the following continuous, integrated, step-by-step CTEM cycle:

1. Scoping
2. Discovery
3. Prioritization
4. Mobilization
5. Validation

Scoping

Scoping becomes an integral part of the CTEM process, as it helps to identify the key attack surfaces, where the vulnerabilities can be managed. Scoping often involves numerous decisions makers, including stakeholders and leaders from the IT and InfoSec teams, Legal, GRC, Development, Product owners, and Business Operations teams.

The definition of the scope is critical to clearly documenting business goals. Business goals determine the parameters for identification of vulnerability, thus helping stakeholders align on the impacts that a compromise could have on business operations.

Scoping includes:

1. Asset Identification: Critical asset identification is the first step in scoping.
2. Roles and Responsibilities: Stakeholders need to be assigned the appropriate roles and responsibilities to drive the CTEM program. Their roles need to be communicated across the organization.
3. Organizational Risk Tolerance: Assessing the organizational risk tolerance and the extent of risk tolerance is critical to forming the CTEM framework.
4. Organizational Risk Analysis: Organizational risk factors should be considered putting everything within a single bucket. Some of the key risks include but are not limited to external attack surfaces, supply chain risks, cloud infrastructure, and application risks.

Discovery

The scoping phase is followed by the asset discovery phase. For this step to be successful, it is important to keep the scoping phase aligned with the business processes and goals. In the discovery phase, the asset discovery and risk profile assessment become critical. Prioritizing the discovery process in the areas of business goals should always be encouraged.

The discovery process considers the system vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, counterfeit assets, and response stratification to the phishing tests.

Discovery includes:

• Asset Management: Critical assets are mapped within the organization, such as identified software, hardware, data hubs, IoT, websites, and networks.
• Vulnerability Discovery: Often done on a higher level, this step aims to discover potential vulnerabilities in the mapped assets that can be prone to potential attacks by attack vectors.
• Risk Assessment: Before proceeding with the CTEM process, unraveling the current IT Security posture is critical – as it can guide the CISOs to implement changes, based on current market trends.
• Risk Exposure: Based on the organization’s risk tolerance, exposed risks are classified, along with a full list of external asset vulnerability discoveries.

Prioritization

There is a shift from the traditional view of IT security management: not every vulnerability detected must be remediated. Now, the focus is upon remediation of the most critical vulnerabilities that pose the highest risks to the organization’s long-term goals. With this focus, teams can enhance security measures in these areas first and foremost. The key here is to allocate the resources towards impactful vulnerabilities that can impact the system’s functionality for time-sensitive remediation and recovery.

The system topology of the organization plays a critical role in strategizing the CTEM program. A comprehensive program focuses on risk prioritization and risk adjustment, based on key organizational needs. Mission-critical systems within the organization are given priority, yet also ensuring that significant security events are also given importance.

Prioritization includes:

• Impact Analysis: Understanding the harm which the vulnerability or threat is going to have on the organization’s IT systems.
• Security Posture Analysis: Analyzing the current IT systems infrastructure to zero down on whether it can combat any security compromise.
• Vulnerability Identification: Based on the risk of the threats and vulnerabilities to the organization, their stratification is conducted. Risk stratification helps in understanding the vulnerabilities that are more critical and need immediate attention.
• Security Alignment: Alignment with organizational goals and the human and technological resources is the final step of prioritization in the CTEM process.

Validation

Validation is when vulnerabilities are tested with attack simulation to validate how the system will react once the identified vulnerability is exploited. The stage takes place in a secure, test environment where advanced attack techniques are used to take over the system.

During this stage, techniques should be focused on both effectiveness and feasibility within an organizational setup. Because cross-functional acceptance is critical to validation, a threshold of accuracy must be established with internal stakeholders. The validation stage should be comprised of a few processes, including technical assessments, such as penetration testing, breach and attack simulation, and vulnerability assessments.

Security Validation includes:

• Simulation Testing: Attack simulations – aka penetration testing – involves mimicking adversarial tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) in a controlled environment.
• Attack Path context: Using context and correlation, attack path context offers security teams insights and intelligence into the attacker’s point of entry, potential vectors, and ability to advance through highly likely attack paths. Security teams can then remediate attack path vectors to stop the most likely TTPs that have critical risk impacts, such as theft of data, system compromises, malware and ransomware, lateral movement, privilege escalation, obfuscation, and network encryption.
• IT System Response: the response of the IT System offers a gauge of how the system will respond in a real-world attack and how it will respond to required remediation activities.
• Continuous Improvement: Find out the areas where there is a scope for improvement of the technological capabilities to remediate and mitigate more system and asset vulnerabilities.

Mobilization

Mobilization is the final stage of the CTEM process. As the name says, after the organization tracks down improvement areas, it is time to mobilize the resources to implement the key remediation activities to mitigate the vulnerabilities and threats as identified.

Because basic remediation techniques have been outdated as attacks now carry more advanced complexities, key stakeholders must be assigned to orchestrate the remediation of the vulnerabilities instead of fully automating vulnerabilities. Along with the validation step, mobilization requires humans to validate findings first using their manual expertise. Once remediation priorities are approved, automation activities can be scheduled.

Mobilization includes:

• Standard Operating Procedure (SOP): Defining clear and structured processes in an SOP gives teams the information they need to manage vulnerabilities and threats with reduced friction.
• Communication: Laying down clear and concise channels of communication across major stakeholders, including the CISO, DevSecOps, GRC, Legal, IT, and InfoSec teams.
• Threat Exposure Management Process: Establishing a well-balanced process leveraging automation when possible, and manual remediation when automation cannot be reliably scheduled or the mitigation activities, such as patch management, are complex.
• Agile Response: Measuring and monitoring overall mobilization efficacy and making changes when needed.

Success Requires Measurement and Collaboration

Even though the CTEM process is cyclical, it is important to note that certain external factors can impact the CTEM process, necessitating the need for a formal collaboration process with established metrics to measure security maturity KPIs, such as Mean Time to Discovery. Business mergers and acquisitions, security frameworks such as OWASP Top 10, nascent business projects, changes in business goals, changes in the board’s risk appetite, and more, can impact the security outcomes of the CTEM program. Hence, organizational collaboration and measurement are keys to the program’s on-going success.

The CTEM process follows an agile method; team communication, well-defined workflows, and structured directions are critical for success. CISO, CEOs, and other key stakeholders actively review the CTEM program from a holistic perspective to discuss metrics and remove any workflow frictions that increase remediation delays, cause system disintegrations, and trigger downstream impacts on the SOC.

Build a CTEM Program with External Attack Surface Management and Pen Testing as a Service

One of the key confusions among the key industry leaders is with the status of CTEM – a program or a tool. To get things clear, Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) is a program that involves a combination of key tools to improve the security stance of the organization.

With the CTEM program divided into 5 different phases, the first three phases can be supplied by External Attack Surface Management (EASM), with the last two phases using a combination of EASM and Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS). This is a leading recommendation that offers the best value and security outcomes that a CTEM program can offer.

An EASM solution provides external surface discovery and identification, while PTaaS can assess, test, and validate attack surface exposures that require remediation. Together, these solutions form a continuous threat exposure management program that identifies vulnerabilities and validates them by simulating attacks that test potential system impacts.

Another advantage of the EASM and PTaaS combination for CTEM is the benefit of continuous, automated penetration testing around the clock that doesn’t interrupt the rhythm of the business or the CIA triad. Automated pentesting with PTaaS and EASM offers a way to proactively validate findings and remediation. As an added safeguard, security validation in the CTEM process speeds up team collaboration and DevSecOps workflows while preventing unintended consequences or interrupting business continuity.

When combined into a CTEM program, PTaaS and EASM form capabilities that give teams the exact priorities they need first and foremost to repair the exposed vectors that collectively form high potential attack paths. Together, EASM and PTaaS provide the right balance of speed and accuracy, making it one of the most efficient, effective CTEM approaches available today.

1. First, teams can launch SET, BreachLock’s EASM platform, to “see external threats” in 1 hour or less for External Attack Surface Management. SET gives in-house teams the tools they need to remediate vulnerabilities and threat exposures fast for a significantly less penetrable attack surface. With SET, security teams can set the scope, discover, and quantify assets into a real-time asset inventory along with continuous asset discovery, vulnerability scanning, and threat monitoring of external attack surfaces. SET offers a real-time, single pane of glass to see external threats and risks and prioritize them for remediation:
   • Scan the internet for known and unknown vulnerabilities exposed to the internet – and helps security teams respond fast to beat cyber criminals lurking on the internet looking for their next target.
   • Investigate each discovered asset and URL affected by each discovered vulnerability with context and data.
   • Continuously scan 24/7 for newly discovered assets, security vulnerabilities, weaknesses, misconfiguration, and compliance issues that your security team can remediate fast with accuracy and precision.

Check out BreachLock’s Founder and CEO Seemant Sehgal’s interview with Cybercrime Ventures and learn more about SET for EASM: [Video] See External Threats with SET, BreachLock’s New EASM Platform

1. Second, security leaders can security validation and full-stack pentesting services using BreachLock’s award-winning, analyst recognized Penetration Testing Service. With a cloud-native, secure platform, teams can work together with BreachLock’s in-house, certified penetration testers for security and compliance testing, vulnerability assessments, and security validation that scales with agility, flexibility, and continuity like never before.With PTaaS, security leaders can start a penetration test in one business day:
   • Assess and validate security with proactive, continuous security testing that is accurate, efficient, and free of false positives.
   • Conduct penetration testing across full stack systems with BreachLock’s cloud-native penetration testing platform to secure cloud, multi-cloud, and hybrid environments.
   • Conduct pentesting on schedule, with tools to conduct automated vulnerability scanning and assess vulnerabilities continuously to reduce threat exposures and eliminate the potential of a preventable security breach.

Build your Continuous Threat Exposure Management Program with BreachLock

Organizations must stay ahead of the curve when it comes to tackling the exponential growth of threat exposures on the attack surface.

BreachLock offers a proven combination with a remediation and identification toolkit that combines the powers of PTaaS and EASM to improve the security of IT systems. Combined – these solutions form the foundation for a CTEM program with a multi-faceted platform that improves breach prevention and vulnerability management.

Ready to see why PTaaS and EASM can help your teams close security gaps faster and more efficiently with a Continuous Threat Exposure Management program? Contact BreachLock, the global leader in advanced penetration and security testing, and discover how you can build a robust CTEM program that delivers improved security outcomes immediately with world-class technology, services, and dedicated offensive security experts.

Gartner Identifies the Top Cybersecurity Trends for 2023. Gartner Research. (2023, April 12). https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/04-12-2023-gartner-identifies-the-top-cybersecurity-trends-for-2023
D’Hoinne J., Shoard P. Implement a Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) Program. Gartner Research. (2022, July 21).

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FAQs

What is a Continuous Threat Exposure Management program?

According to Gartner Research, a Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) program is an integrated, iterative approach to prioritizing critical risks, continuously improving the security posture, and strengthening cyber resilience. CTEM is not a stand-alone tool nor a dedicated technology-based solution. CTEM requires a multi-faceted approach within the security program; hence, the program must be built with a combination of technical solutions in place. A CTEM program takes the first step in identification and planning for resolution and is not time-constrained by real-time threat detection activities.

Why is a Continuous Threat Exposure Management program important?

A Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) program emphasizes preventive measures to reduce the volume of real-time threats detected. As threat actors constantly evolve, prevention activities should focus on their most critical priorities using external attack surface management, regular penetration testing, and continuous vulnerability management.

However, traditional vulnerability scanning cannot scan an unknown attack surface, and technology-centric assessments and self-assessments fall short. While prioritized lists based on security posture validation help with ranking, they are insufficient to drive non-security teams towards remediation without proper business context and accountability considerations.

A CTEM program provides a balance between comprehensive automation and manual intervention required by using automation, security validation, and remediation support. By prioritizing known vulnerabilities and weak controls, teams can prepare for unknown threats, proactively mitigate risks, and improve their overall security effectiveness with CTEM.

What are the top benefits of a Continuous Threat Exposure Management program?

A CTEM program offers three important benefits to efficiently improve security outcomes immediately and over time:

1) Prevents Breaches while Minimizing the Impact of a Potential Breach

A Continuous Threat Exposure Management program contributes valuable insights, intelligence, and context to enhance the effectiveness of the Security Operations Center (SOC) by reducing the volume of security incidents, events, and breaches impacting the SOC over time. The CTEM program does fulfill threat detection or incident response capabilities, but rather offers a proactive, preventative approach that bolsters cyber resilience quickly and improves security maturity year-over-year.

2) Reduces Cybersecurity Risks

Real-time risk reduction is often impractical due to business constraints and a backlog of pending security issues. In such cases, the Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) program is an invaluable program that doesn’t stop improving outcomes. It assists in prioritizing risk reduction actions and optimizing resource allocation, ensuring that cybersecurity risks are effectively addressed despite team constraints, resource limitations, and competing priorities.

3) Strengthens Cyber Resilience

Building cyber resilience demands long-term investments and a strategic approach that may span several years. The Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) program can provide valuable insights to inform and strengthen the overall cybersecurity strategy, enabling organizations to better navigate the challenges of cyber threats and enhance their cyber resilience over time.

How does a Continuous Threat Exposure Management program improve remediation?

A Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) program can significantly accelerate DevSecOps workflows for rapid remediation. Security leaders can quickly mobilize teams, assess newly discovered assets and vulnerabilities, and prevent unintended consequences that will cost time and money. Going beyond traditional patch management, signature matching, and IR playbooks, the CTEM program empowers organizations to conduct preventative interventions and tested automations and AI to optimize the security posture before a breach occurs.

Going beyond immediate remediation efforts, the CTEM program enhances security effectiveness through continuous asset discovery, vulnerability assessment, risk prioritization, breached data detection, and continuous threat monitoring. Teams can use APIs to improve ticketing integrations for those responsible for DevSecOps to prioritize remediation activities while reducing the typical cross-functional team friction caused by slow patch management processes – meanwhile, cyber risks increase. By leveraging the context and security validation that CTEM delivers, cybersecurity professionals can achieve efficient and thorough remediation outcomes.

What teams are involved in a Continuous Threat Exposure Management Program?

The implementation of a Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) program involves cross-team collaboration and the sharing of responsibilities and accountability across stakeholders, teams, and departments. This ensures that the assessment, tracking, management, and remediation of exposure are effectively coordinated and addressed throughout the organization.

Security Operations (SecOps) will take the lead and most critical role in overseeing the assessment, tracking, and continuous management of threat exposures. The SOC (security operations center) is typically responsible for monitoring and identifying potential threats and vulnerabilities, and triaging security remediation with these functional areas: Network Administration, Cloud Engineering, Application Security, DevSecOps, IT Systems Administration, Infrastructure, Software Engineering, and Infrastructure. These groups all work together to take appropriate measures and remediate vulnerabilities to enhance the overall security posture and support the CTEM program, along with dedicated technology and/or trusted CTEM solution providers.

What constitutes a Continuous Threat Exposure Management Program?

A CTEM program can be built using a combination of technology, talent, and solution providers. A core in-house security team will own the program and outcomes, while technology and service providers will augment staffing, technology, and services required to augment the in-house team capabilities.

According to Gartner Research, a comprehensive CTEM program can be built using one or more combinations of the following market categories for technology and services: External Attack Surface Management (EASM), Pentesting as a Service (PTaaS), Vulnerability Assessment (VA), Cyber asset attack surface management (CAASM), Digital risk protection service (DRPS), Vulnerability prioritization technology (VPT), Breach and attack simulation (BAS), and Automated Pentesting and Red Teaming Services.

What does a Continuous Threat Exposure Management program provide?

A Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) program provides enterprises with a systematic approach to continuously evaluate the accessibility, exposure, and exploitability of their digital and physical assets. It includes five essential steps: scoping, discovery, prioritization, validation, and mobilization. By utilizing tools for asset and vulnerability inventory, attack simulations, and posture assessment, CTEM delivers a consistent and actionable plan to improve security posture. It helps business executives understand the security risks and enables architecture teams to take effective measures. Additionally, CTEM operates within a specific time frame, aligns with governance and compliance mandates, and informs long-term strategic shifts while avoiding the real-time constraints of the threat detection and incident response functions.

What are the best practices to building a new Continuous Threat Exposure Management program?

Organizations can establish a new Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) program that effectively manages threat exposures, aligns with business priorities, and enhances overall security posture by following these best practices for success:

• Create a program that focuses on managing a wide range of exposures relevant to business priorities – such as external vulnerability assessments, asset discovery, and publicly available breached data – rather than exclusively dealing with vulnerabilities.
• Ensure that threat exposure management includes sharing valuable insights across cross-functional teams within the IT and InfoSec departments to support initiatives, like secure-by-design and strengthening incident response effectiveness.
• Expand the scope of threat exposure management by incorporating emerging areas such as attack surface management, penetration testing, and continuous security validation alongside existing vulnerability management programs.
• Implement technologies that support the CTEM program in phases, starting with the basics and then gradually progressing to conducting risk gap analyses.
• Technically integrate the CTEM program with DevSecOps ticketing workflows to improve remediation, remove friction, and boost team collaboration on shared security outcomes.
• As the CTEM program evolves, include exposed assets with limited controls, such as SaaS applications, digital supply chain data, and third party risk management dependencies.