Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management (CAASM)
Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management (CAASM) provides a comprehensive view of all the assets making up an organization’s attack surface – both internal and external – that helps organizations identify, manage, and reduce the risk of cyber threats to their environment. Organizations are continually faced with the challenge of managing an ever-expanding and more complicated array of cyber assets, hardware, software, network devices, users, and data. Traditional security practices often fall short in providing comprehensive visibility and control over these assets that comprise an organization’s attack surface, leaving potential vulnerabilities unaddressed.
By delivering a real-time, unified view of an organization’s entire attack surface through integrations with existing security and IT tools, CAASM enables security teams to shift from taking a reactive approach to security operations to taking a more proactive approach to risk reduction. With complete and continuous visibility, teams can find and close security gaps, streamline compliance efforts, and stay ahead of evolving threats.
Key components of CAASM include:
- Comprehensive, continuous, and real-time asset discovery: CAASM provides a real-time, accurate inventory of all assets (see also Security Inventory). CAASM aggregates, correlates, and deduplicates data from existing sources to provide a true unified asset visibility
- Vulnerability management: Only once a comprehensive inventory of assets has been created, can an organization truly identify and address vulnerabilities and security gaps. CAASM can expose misconfigurations or missing security controls coverage, outdated software, end-of-life (EOL) systems, and more
- Attack surface monitoring: Continuous real-time monitoring of an organization’s attack surface ensures that any new exposures are quickly identified before they can be exploited, reducing risk exposure
CAASM enables organizations to:
- Continuously manage the attack surface to reduce risk exposure and improve overall security
- Understand attack vectors and secure potential entry points
- Discover and identify vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and other security risks
- Understand how cybercriminals can exploit vulnerabilities to compromise assets and data
- Take steps to secure any weak spots that cyber attackers could use to gain access to sensitive information
Additional Resources
- Emerging Tech: Security — Successfully Bringing CAASM to Market
- Comparison Guide: The Criticality of Security Asset Inventory: Moving Beyond IT Asset Management
- Cyber Hygiene and Asset Management: Perception vs. Reality