Attack Surface Management Driving Secure Digital Transformation

_Editor’s Note: The following post is an excerpt. To read more, click here. _

To learn how Attack Surface Intelligence from Recorded Future shines a light on attack surface blind spots and provides an outside-in view of an organization for proactive risk reduction, view the datasheet here.

A recent study by IBM found that nearly six in ten responding organizations accelerated their digital transformation efforts due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The disruptive ground brought on by the global crisis, further exacerbated by the rise in hybrid and remote workforces, has shown organizations just how important it is to be built for change. They need to be both scalable and flexible, and the same goes for their IT infrastructures.

Cloud adoption and management is now at the top of priority lists for CISOs and executives, with the same study’s organizations planning a 20% increase in their prioritization of cloud technology over the next two years.

There is clearly no doubt that digital transformation and accelerated cloud adoption can help organizations optimize and streamline their operations, create innovative business offerings and achieve competitive advantage.

However, the implication of rapid digital transformation, adoption of new technologies and the remote/hybrid workers sprawl means that CISOs and security teams can find themselves unable to fully grasp, and thus secure, an ever-growing attack surface.

The key role of attack surface management in digital transformation

Because of digital transformation, today’s organizations don’t keep all of their digital assets secured tightly behind their perimeter. Rather, they’re scattered all over the Internet, sometimes forgotten and often unsecured. With more areas where a threat or cyber attack can take place, organizations need to protect their critical assets.

Also because of digital transformation and cloud adoption, many organizations can suffer from issues with vendor migration and legacy tooling left online longer than planned.

The best way to react and respond is with a full understanding of their external attack surface and all digital assets. This is why attack surface management plays a key role in the journey to a secure and successful digital transformation.

Attack surface management, or ASM, allows organizations to identify, inventory, classify and monitor all digital assets in their external infrastructure. For organizations with large amounts of cloud instances or hundreds of VPNs, AWS instances, etc., ASM can be particularly important, by helping them identify all of their attack surface components, attack vectors and exposures.

With a unified view of its external infrastructure, an organization can better navigate across disparate technology systems and quickly map and resolve vulnerabilities while keeping pace with its dynamic attack surface. It can also arm the organization with insights toward making better-informed decisions regarding digital transformation efforts.

Editor’s Note: This post was an excerpt. To continue reading, click here.

To learn how Attack Surface Intelligence from Recorded Future shines a light on attack surface blind spots and provides an outside-in view of an organization for proactive risk reduction, view the datasheet here.