WHAT IS ATTACK SURFACE MANAGEMENT?

LAST EDITED:
PUBLISHED:
3/10/2024

(ASM)

Picture a large office complex, with multiple doors and windows between the office and the outside world. These entry points are critical for conducting business—they allowcustomers, partners, and employees to interact with a company.

But they also pose a significant risk. If just one door is left unlocked or a single window is left open, a criminal could easily sneak in, stealing sensitive data or causing irreparable damage to your most valuable assets.

Of course, this risk isn’t limited to the physical world…

What Is Your Attack Surface?

In the digital world, your business has hundreds, if not thousands, of these entry points. Everyserver, application, website, and device connected to the internet is apotential pathway for cybercriminals.

All these vulnerable access points are called your ‘attack surface’.

As your business grows, so does your potential attack surface. Each new technology or service integration adds more doors and windows. Over time, itbecomes harder and harder for you to keep track of them all. Some might be leftopen, others might have outdated locks, and some you might have been forgotten about for years…

To make matters worse, attackers are always finding new ways to pickyour digital locks or discover hidden, unguarded entry points. What was secureyesterday may be vulnerable today!

Take the Equifax breach in 2017. The credit giant suffered a massive data breach exposing the sensitive information of 147 million people. The cause? Avulnerability in an outdated web server that had been publicly known for months – but that Equifax failed topatch. They left a window open, and attackers climbed right in.

Your business has anattack surface, and that attack surface needs to be managed.

What is Attack SurfaceManagement (ASM)?

Attack Surface Management(ASM) is the proactive, continuous process of discovering, analyzing,prioritizing, and remediating potential vulnerabilities across your entireattack surface. It's about finding and fixing the gaps in your digitalperimeter before cyber criminals find and exploit them first.

Tools likeBlackpanda ASM can automate and streamline this process, making it easier tokeep your attack surface secure.

 

How Does Blackpanda ASM Work?

Deploying Blackpanda ASM is like installing intelligent security cameras around your digital officecomplex. It continuously scans your perimeter, checking every door and windowis closed and locked tight. If it finds an open door, it alerts you immediately.If it spots an outdated lock, it flags it for an update.

Essentially, it shows you what everybody—including hackers—sees fromthe outside.

Here’s how it works:

Asset Discovery
It starts with asset discovery. Our advancedalgorithms automatically scan your entire digital infrastructure, discoveringand mapping every internet-facing asset an attacker would also find, includingon-premise systems, cloud-based servers, and third-party integrations.

Continuous VulnerabilityScanning
Our platform then continuously scans your assets forover 80,000+ known vulnerabilities. When vulnerabilities are found, they're prioritized based on severity and potential impact, allowing you to address themost pressing issues first.

But Blackpanda ASM goes one step further than just scanning yourdigital perimeter…

Dark Web Monitoring
Imagine if thieves were selling copies of your keys oremployee access cards on the black market. That's essentially what happens onthe dark web, where cybercriminals buy and sell stolen data and hacking tools.Our ASM solution also includes dark web monitoring. We continuously scan thesehidden marketplaces, alerting you immediately if your data or staff credentialsappear for sale. This early warning can buy you critical time to secure yourentry points before an attack occurs.

Centralised Insights

All of these findings are delivered through an intuitive user dashboard. You can access bothcurrent and historic reports anytime, giving you a centralized view of yourattack surface and helping you make informed, data-driven security decisions.

IR-1: Powered by Blackpanda ASM

While Blackpanda ASM is apowerful standalone tool for securing your digital perimeter, its real strengthlies in its seamless integration with our flagship IR-1 solution.

In a world where a single cyber attack can cripple a business in minutes, we believe that access to top-tier cyber emergency response services should be a basic right, not a luxury.

This philosophy is the driving force behind IR-1: to make premium,comprehensive cyber emergency response services more affordable and accessiblefor businesses of all sizes, without compromising on quality.

IR-1 is our fixed-costincident response (IR) subscription solution, designed to overcome the high costs and limited accessibility of traditional IR retainermodels. It has been carefully curated to address the three most fundamentalaspects of cybersecurity that every business needs—Readiness, Response, andRecovery—all for an annual fee that's about90% less than traditional IR retainers.

Blackpanda ASM is the technology that makes the IR-1 mission possible:

1. Readiness:
Attack Surface Management

We provide Blackpanda ASM 100% complimentary as part of your IR-1subscription. By continuously scanning your digital perimeter forvulnerabilities, ASM helps you identify the most common gaps exploited in 99%of cyber attacks. By proactively securing your attack surface, we can keep yousafer—and that keeps costs low for everyone.

2. Response:
Accelerated Investigation

In the event of an attack, our dedicated cyber emergency response teamrelies on ASM scan data to quickly identify compromised assets and validatecontainment measures.

This integration between ASM technology and incident response servicesenables faster response times, more effective containment, and minimaldisruption to your business.

3. Recovery:
Data-Driven Pricing Validation for Cyber Insurance

Our ASM data is so comprehensive and reliable that we, as a Lloyd's ofLondon insurance company, also use it to validate our insurance pricing. Thisdata feeds directly into our models, allowing us to provide instant, one-clickinsurance estimates with confidence. No lengthy questionnaires or complexunderwriting processes—just straightforward, data-driven coverage.

The same data you trust to proactively manage your cyber risk is whatwe trust to accurately assess that risk and offer competitive premiums. We putour money where our mouth is, as a testament to the robustness and reliabilityof our ASM technology.

Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

It's this synergy between ASM, premium incident response, andstreamlined cyber insurance that allows us to deliver world-class cyber protection at a price point accessible to businesses of all sizes.

With IR-1, you'renot just getting a bundle of top-tier cybersecurity services. You're getting aunified solution that covers you end to end—from preventing attacks toresponding to emergencies and recovering financially from any damage done.

Secure Your Digital Doors andWindows

In the rapidly evolvingdigital threat landscape, managing your attack surface is no longeroptional—it's a necessity. With Blackpanda ASM and IR-1, you can take proactivecontrol of your digital entry points. You can identify and closevulnerabilities before they can be exploited, quickly respond to incidents, andrecover with confidence.

Don't leave your digital doors and windows wide open for attackers.Solidify your defenses today. Contact Blackpanda to learn more about how ourASM and IR-1 solutions can help save you from the crippling costs of a cyberattack.

Do youknow what to do if you get hacked? We do.

Get in touch with us to learn more about IR-1.

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