Sevco Glossary > Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) is a cybersecurity framework that helps organizations identify, assess, and mitigate cyber threats. CTEM is a proactive approach that continuously monitors an organization’s digital assets and network infrastructure to identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
CTEM fulfills the need for a more robust approach to managing risk across expanding attack surfaces, providing organizations with a defined process to continuously identify, assess, prioritize, validate, and remediate risks across all assets. A new category of tools, Exposure Assessment Platforms (EAPs), help to drive these programs.
CTEM is an evolution of vulnerability management programs, which were primarily focused on software vulnerabilities like CVEs. Continuous Threat Exposure Management looks at the broader exposures in an organization’s attack surface, which can include shadow IT, end-of-life systems, unpatched devices, devices with missing or misconfigured agents, and more. It aims to provide intelligence on the risks these exposures pose in the real world with threat intelligence, business context, and visibility into any mitigating controls that might be present so that security teams can understand and prioritize the greatest risks for remediation first.
CTEM involves:
- Assessing an organization’s attack surface
- Proactively testing defenses
- Addressing vulnerabilities to reduce risk in real time
- Ensuring that an organization constantly monitors threats
This exposure management framework is comprised of five stages:
- Stage 1 – Scoping: Identifying the attack surface and critical assets
- Stage 2 – Discovery: Discovering assets and risk profiles, identifying security gaps including misconfiguration
- Stage 3 – Prioritization: Identifying and prioritizing the assets and threats most likely to be exploited
- Stage 4 – Validation: Validate how potential attackers might exploit an identified exposure
- Stage 5 – Mobilization: Ensure teams across the organization operationalize the findings
Additional Resources
- CTEM in the Spotlight: How Gartner’s New Categories Help to Manage Exposures
- How to Manage Cybersecurity Threats, Not Episodes
- How Sevco Powers Exposure Management and CTEM Programs