Cybersecurity has become crucial in a global world that is progressively becoming more interconnected with the virtual realm. As businesses continue to embrace rapid digital transformations, their exposure to threats becomes greater. A proactive approach to cybersecurity and exposure management involves identifying, assessing and addressing potential risks to help reduce weak points in a system. This ongoing effort is to keep up with the most recent security practices and technologies. Continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) is a strategic approach to cybersecurity that can be beneficial to dodging threats.
CTEM is a continuous threat exposure management process that includes continuous, real-time management and monitoring. Rather than relying on reactive solutions like firewalls, CTEM actively seeks potential threats and flaws before cyber criminals can act. This proactive security process allows businesses to simultaneously see their real-time cybersecurity risk posture and make informed decisions about their security. This exposure management process enables security teams to see where threats lie, gauge the level of risk and implement solutions. CTEM also helps companies understand their technical and business needs, opening the door for security and business teams to arrive on the same page.
CTEM is a process of phases, with the completion of each phase necessary for the exposure management system’s success. The initial three phases are scoping, discovery and prioritizing. As the first phase, the scoping process helps you determine the most crucial assets to protect and their associated risks. This is where you establish the framework for your exposure management. Through discovery, you will identify and gain a clear understanding of the challenges and vulnerabilities you may come up against. The third phase is prioritization, which is where you evaluate your risks and determine which are most pressing, allocating resources as needed.
While these first three phases of CTEM do not complete the process, they are critical to the overall success of your exposure management system. After evaluating and identifying the most critical vulnerabilities, it is crucial to validate suspected vulnerabilities and how to address them best through mobilization of internal support.
Validation is the fourth phase of the CTEM process. Still, it is linked substantially to the prioritization phase because validation may require a new evaluation of the risks and their rankings completed during prioritization. During validation, security teams will begin addressing the identified vulnerabilities classified to have the greatest priority by testing them. This is done through breach and attack simulation (BAS), which allows businesses to understand better their vulnerabilities and what areas could be more effectively blocked by their current controls and security processes.
BAS allows for understanding breach feasibility and whether or not the business’s plan to address exposures is adequate. Essentially, security teams are able to verify if the plans in place will work should a real threat arrive.
The final stage of the CTEM process is mobilization, where security leaders deliver the message that remediation cannot be addressed with existing resources. While automated solutions are able to address common issues, in a quick-changing virtual landscape, these solutions cannot keep up. This is when business stakeholders enter the picture. Mobilization is taking action to address vulnerabilities, and they often can only be fully addressed with additional resources. These additional resources are at the discretion of the stakeholders, who must choose to authorize the budget, downtime, or other steps needed to solve the issue.
While the process is complete after all phases are followed through, the wicked never sleep and with cybercriminals evolving their skills, CTEM is a continuous process to help defeat them.
Members of the editorial and news staff of the Las Vegas Review-Journal were not involved in the creation of this content.