Effective Attack Surface Management (ASM) is essential for understanding and mitigating cyber risks to your organisation. It can be broken down into four key parts: discovery, assessment and prioritisation, risk prevention, and integration.

Discovery is the foundation of any ASM process. Most organisations miss up to 50% of their true attack surface, creating significant blind spots in their understanding of cyber risks. Eliminating these blind spots should be a core goal when discovering your attack surface. Organisations often work within a predefined scope during discovery, but attackers do not care about your scope. A zero-scope approach is essential for uncovering the full extent of your attack surface. Automation, such as AI and algorithmic-based discovery, is necessary to efficiently and effectively discover your attack surface.

Assessment and prioritisation is an ongoing process as your attack surface is constantly evolving. Continuously monitoring for changes and prioritising risks according to threat is crucial for staying up-to-date on actual risks to the organisation. Automated risk assessment tools can save time and effort by identifying the most pressing risks and focusing on the mitigation process.

Risk prevention is crucial once you have a comprehensive overview of the risks your organisation faces. It can be overwhelming to uncover so many potential threats, but having this knowledge is essential for effectively preventing and mitigating cyber risks. CISOs and cybersecurity professionals can use this information to prioritise and address the most pressing risks, while also understanding and preparing for potential threats.

Integration is the final step in effective ASM, bringing all of the previous steps together to create a cohesive and comprehensive strategy for understanding and mitigating cyber risks. This includes integrating ASM into your overall cybersecurity strategy and incorporating it into your organisation’s overall risk management approach.

And so with this in mind, it is key for organisations to recognise that effective Attack Surface Management is crucial for understanding and mitigating cyber risks to your enterprise. Darktrace offers artificial intelligence solutions that are actually intelligent. The solution doesn’t just learn your organisation, inside and out, down to the smallest digital details. It actually understands what’s normal to identify what’s not. Which makes it incredibly effective at dealing with and even preventing the most sophisticated cyber-attacks.

DataGroupIT is proud to offer top-rated cybersecurity solutions to our clients and customers across the continent. Looking to add cutting edge AI-driven cybersecurity to your organisation? Speak to us today to find out more.