09/05/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 09/05/2024 13:22
In today's complex digital landscape, protecting your organization from cyber threats is more crucial than ever. Highly distributed multicloud systems and an ever-changing threat landscape facilitate potential vulnerabilities going undetected, putting organizations at risk. A robust application security strategy is vital to ensuring the safety of your organization's data and applications. This is why exposure management is a key cornerstone of modern application security.
Exposure management offers a proactive approach to safeguarding an organization's assets. By identifying, assessing, and mitigating potential vulnerabilities, organizations can significantly reduce the risk of an incoming successful attack. This blog delves into the key principles of this approach, how it differs from vulnerability management, and how it can help you enhance your organization's security posture.
Exposure management is a strategic approach to cybersecurity that involves identifying potential vulnerabilities, evaluating their impact, and implementing countermeasures to protect against attacks. By concentrating on external assets, exposure management maps out the organization's potential entry points for attackers.
The success of exposure management relies on a well-defined process that includes the following steps:
Vulnerability management focuses on finding and fixing security weaknesses within an organization's systems. Exposure management takes a broader approach, encompassing vulnerability management and the overall risk assessment of an organization's entire external footprint. Although vulnerability management and exposure management share some similarities, they differ in their scope and objectives.
. | Vulnerability management | Exposure management |
Scope | Concentrates on internal security flaws | Examines the organization's complete external profile |
Focus | Aims to eliminate security weaknesses | Aims to minimize the overall risk to the organization |
Outcome | Seeks to minimize the number of security flaws | Seeks to reduce the likelihood and impact of a successful cyberattack |
Essentially, managing vulnerabilities is a component of exposure management. To effectively protect against cyber threats and strengthen your organization's security posture, a combination of managing both exposures and vulnerabilities is ideal.
Exposure management, while essential for safeguarding organizations' applications and data, presents several challenges, including the following:
Despite these challenges, effective exposure management is essential for protecting organizations from cyber threats. By addressing these challenges and implementing best practices, organizations can improve their security posture and reduce the risk of a successful cyber-attack.
Exposure management helps organizations strengthen their overall security posture by identifying and mitigating potential weaknesses. By proactively identifying and addressing vulnerabilities, organizations can significantly reduce their chances of falling victim to cyberattacks.
Moreover, as regulatory initiatives go into effect to mitigate the risk associated with the ever-evolving threat landscape, organizations are encouraged to drive a risk-based approach to application security. Many industry regulations and standards-including the SEC cybersecurity mandate, NIS2 Directive, and DORA-require organizations to implement robust security measures. Exposure management can help ensure compliance with these requirements.
By focusing on the most critical vulnerabilities, exposure management can also help organizations allocate their security resources more effectively and efficiently. Finally, a strong exposure management posture can help increase organizations' confidence in their overall application security approach, keeping their data and systems safeguarded from potential attacks.
Exposure management plays a pivotal role in bolstering application security by providing a holistic view of potential vulnerabilities and risks. Here are some ways that the approach enhances overall application security:
When combined with vulnerability management, exposure management is a critical aspect of an organization's overall application security strategy. By proactively identifying, assessing, and mitigating vulnerabilities, organizations can significantly reduce their risk of cyberattacks and protect their valuable assets. As the threat landscape continues to evolve, it is essential that organizations invest in effective exposure management solutions to ensure their ongoing security.
Dynatrace Application Security offers a comprehensive approach to exposure management by providing several key capabilities. The platform offers real-time insights into potential vulnerabilities and security threats by continuously monitoring applications and infrastructure. With Runtime Vulnerability Analytics, Dynatrace automatically identifies vulnerabilities across the entire application stack, including third-party components and dependencies.
The platform's risk assessment capability assesses the potential impact of vulnerabilities on the application and business, helping organizations prioritize remediation efforts. Auto-remediation reduces the manual workload on security teams while threat intelligence helps them stay informed about emerging threats and vulnerabilities.
Finally, as a unified observability and security platform, Dynatrace integrates with other security tools to provide a holistic view of an organization's security posture.