What Is Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)?

Keeping your organization secure is like steering a ship in a sea that constantly keeps changing its tides. One has to constantly adapt based on the ebbs and flows of the tide.

When it comes to cybersecurity, organizations have been adapting based on the ebbs and flows of the threat landscape. But this landscape is changing, and relying just on traditional vulnerability management programs or detection and response tools is not going to be enough to stay afloat.

This is due to many reasons.

First of all, when it comes to detection and response tools, one of the major problems with these tools is that they are reactive in nature. These tools respond to a threat only after it has been detected or triggered.  

There is also no way to measure how well these tools will perform during an actual cyberattack. Either they may completely go dud or may stop an attack. The uncertainty of their security efficacy will always be there.

Furthermore, the detection and response tools will also not reveal the impact a specific risk may have on your organization ifr more, the detection and response tools will also not reveal what impact a specific risk may have on your organization in case an adversary decides to exploit it.

Lastly, they will also not remediate it.

Now, turning our attention to vulnerability management programs, the problem with them is that they will run a scan and give you a list of hundreds of vulnerabilities that exist within your systems.  

That’s it! 

Which ones are more risky? Which ones should we prioritize and resolve? Which ones should we postpone to later?

It will give you no context on that, nor will it remediate anything.

Lastly, it also does not cover all the exposures.

So, in short, having a vulnerability management program or detection and response tools is not going to be enough to survive today’s threat landscape.

What your organization needs is a remediation-focused threat exposure management program, which will act as a lighthouse and warn your organization of the security risks that adversaries can exploit in the future.

This is needed now more than ever due to the increasing attack surface that organizations are struggling with nowadays.

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The Growing Black Hole of Security Risks Within Organizations

Even though every organization has a security program in place, they are grappling with the problem of managing different security risks that are constantly growing in size like a black hole. The traditional approaches to cybersecurity that companies previously relied upon are struggling to close this gap due to the increasing complexity of these technologies.

What could be the reasons? Well, there are many:

First of all, there is poor visibility across IT, OT, IoT, and Cloud. While security tools have been consolidated, they are still plagued by poor integration and a lack of meaningful automation and playbooks.

Most organizations don’t even take into account the security aspect while transitioning to a new business model (such as a remote or hybrid model). They don’t understand that such transitions affect the attack surface and result in a weaker or inconsistent security posture

Additionally, the security configurations are operating sub-optimally, and security teams are suffering from fatigue and burnout due to the pressure of having to manage multiple dashboards.

Furthermore, leveraging automation for efficiency and scale is inevitable, but not everything can be fully automated; for example, patching can be automated to ensure regular updates, but code level and critical software review requires expert DevSecOps involvement; similarly, remediation also can not be fully automated

Lastly, the entire security infrastructure lacks a unified view, and all of these problems are further exacerbated by the growing shortage and attrition of manpower in the cybersecurity field.

The Gartner Report on State of Vulnerability Management Programs 2023 states:

"The greatest challenges regarding VM seem to be keeping up with changes in the local and global "technology environment," the changes and additions in legal and policy requirements, and managing the associated budget to provide for adequate control and management."

- C-suite, educational services industry, 5,000 - 10,000 employees

The attack surface will only keep on growing in the future, as organizations will never top incorporating the newest technologies to stay competitive in today’s market. This tsunami of digitization that began post-COVID-19 will never abate, so adversaries will keep getting more opportunities in the future to breach inside the organization.

That’s the paradox of technologies: the more an organization incorporates, the more vulnerable it becomes to cyberattacks. Also, it will be impossible to fix every known vulnerability.   

So, how can organizations manage this growing black hole of different security risks without having to sacrifice on the technology front?

The answer lies in CTEM.

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM): How Does it Help as a Security Lighthouse?

The purpose of CTEM is to improve an organization’s security posture over time through a cyclical program that is easy for CEOs to agree upon and different departments to act upon.

This program does not follow a one-size-fits-all approach; rather, it is created based on the unique risk profile the organization has for security risks.  

The goal is to help organizations determine three things on a regular basis:

●     How accessible their digital and physical assets are to adversaries

●     How exposed their digital and physical assets are to adversaries

●     How exploitable their digital and physical assets are to adversaries

Like a lighthouse, it will shed light on your organization’s growing black hole of the attack surface and highlight those vulnerabilities that have a higher chance of getting exploited by cybercriminals; otherwise, the ship may sink from a cyberattack. These are the ones that need to be remediated first.  

By 2026, Gartner predicts that organizations prioritizing their security investments based on a CTEM program will realize a two-thirds reduction in breaches. 

The CTEM program comes with five processes: scoping, prioritization, discovery, validation, and mobilization.

These five processes should be performed each time your organization comes up with new goals or brings some changes in its internal processes. It should be initiated even when a new attack technique has been discovered somewhere, since it can be used against your organization too.

Below, we have explained how these five processes work.  

The Five-Step Process of CTEM Program

In the CTEM program, all five processes have a specific purpose of fulfilling. Unlike the traditional vulnerability management program, CTEM takes into account the following:

●     Why should we resolve this vulnerability or exploit it first compared to the rest?

●     How will it impact the organization if an adversary exploits it?

Let’s go over each one - by - one.

Scoping

Traditional vulnerability management programs are unable to cover everything that can be exploited by cybercriminals.

Under the CTEM program, this issue is resolved by creating an outline of the scope, which should include those areas that are essential to the business. These are the ones that can severely impact the functioning of an organization if it comes under attack from a cybercriminal.  

Later on, this scope can be expanded to cover other lesser things that can also be exploited by an adversary.  

Unlike the traditional approach, The CTEM program will also include the attacker’s view during the scoping process.

Aright scoping will involve areas like External Attack Surface, SaaS security posture, Digital Risk Protection, and Dark and Deep Web Sources.

Discovery

Once the scoping process is completed, the next step is to discover those assets and map out their risk of getting exploited by cybercriminals. Although it's not mandatory, focus on those essential business areas that you have included during the scoping process.   

These assets shouldn’t just be identified based on their vulnerabilities but should also include other weaknesses like misconfigurations, poor security controls, counterfeiting, and responses to phishing tests.  

Once you have identified the list of assets, it’s time to prioritize which ones need to be remediated first.

Prioritization

In this stage, organizations will need to identify those exploits that have the highest chance of getting exploited by adversaries. To do this, they will need to classify every exploit based on the following:

●     How frequently do cybercriminal star get that specific exploit when launching a cyberattack

●     What will be the impact on the organization if that specific exploit is targeted?  

●     Are there any compensating controls to reduce the impact of the exploit in case the main security control fails

●     Does that specific exploit go beyond the threshold that the organization has for security risks?

A part from prioritizing remediation, CTEM also comes up with a rationale as to why remediation for certain exploits should be postponed for later based on the analysis of the system’s topology, configuration, and criticality.  

Further more, the CTEM plan will also ensure that organizations can quickly react to exceptional events like zero-day vulnerabilities, which require immediate attention.

Validation

TheValidation process is akin to a mock drill, in which the security team will launch an attack on the organization using the techniques and tactics employed by the cybercriminals. The goal is to test how these adversaries will exploit the identified exposures and observe the security monitoring and control system’s reaction to them.

This stage is also useful in determining how efficient it will be to deploy the proposed remediation and whether it is going to be feasible for organizations or not.  

The validation process should achieve three goals:

●     Assess the likely chance of the attack being successful or not. This will help the organization gauge the chances of actual adversaries being able to exploit this vulnerability.

●     Observe the impact of the attack on the organization. This also includes all the initial footprint and all touch points through which the adversary can reach the crucial asset.

●     Determine if the proposed remediation to resolve the vulnerability worked or not.

Through the validation stage, CTEM aims to improve an organization’s security posture continually by constantly assessing and remediating all crucial exploits.

Mobilization

Mobilization stage is about bringing everyone on the same page. One of the problems with the tool-centric approach is that the solution it proposes might not be acceptable to other departments or to the CEO of the organization. 

Mobilization aims to reduce frictions, build consensus when implementing all the processes and mitigations based upon the CTEM’s findings.

Another thing that organizations need to realize is that the remediation process cannot be fully automated.

While it's fine to automate fixes for simple issues, the problem is that the majority of organizations are trying to automate everything, whereas actual treatments are limited to just patching or changing basic threat detection rules and security controls.

Trying to automate remediation in CTEM is a sure-shot way to fail as it is not just the security team's responsibility; rather, every department of the organization will need to come together to implement the proposed remediation.

Implementing a CTEM program can be a huge and confusing endeavor, but your organization doesn’t have to bear the burden all alone. We at Infopercept can implement this plan fully through Invinsense.

Invinsense OXDR: The Trusted Ally in Helping Your Organization at Every Stage of CTEM

You don’t have to deal with the headache of implementing CTEM in your organization. From scoping to mobilization, our team at Infopercept will handle everything.

Identifying the Full Attack Surface (Scoping)

In the first stage, our offensive team will create a comprehensive scope of your organization, identifying all potential attack vectors an adversary might exploit. This includes areas such as:

●     External attack surfaces.

●     Dark web exposure.

●     Software development pipelines.

●     Traditional devices, applications, and systems (e.g., OT/IoT, cloud infrastructure).

●     Online repositories and supply chains.

●     Wireless networks, social media accounts, and human-based risks.

Uncovering All the Exploitable Vulnerabilities(Discovery)

Once the scope is defined, our team will uncover vulnerabilities across your organization. This includes system and network risks, misconfigurations, human weaknesses, and third-party exposures. Below are our solutions that will undertake this task:

●     Invinsense Attack Surface Monitoring: Identifies exposures in the dark web and external surfaces.

●     Invinsense Vulnerability Management: Scans and assesses vulnerabilities in devices, applications, and systems across your organization’s workflow.

●     Invinsense DevSecOps: Detects all the vulnerabilities within your software development lifecycle.

Focusing on Vulnerabilities that Matter the Most (Prioritization)

Not all vulnerabilities are created equal.  

So, our team will focus on high-impact threats by prioritizing vulnerabilities based on the following:

●     Business Context: Risks are ranked by their potential impact on critical business operations of your organization.

●     Exploitability: Identifies vulnerabilities that adversaries are most likely to target.

●     Actionable Intelligence: Provides clear, prioritized reports and empowers your organizations to allocate resources where they matter most.

Testing Defenses Against Real-World Attacks(Validation)

After prioritizing vulnerabilities, our team will validate their exploitability by simulating real-world attack scenarios through the following solutions:

●     Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS): Simulates adversary techniques to identify weaknesses within the organization.  

●     Continuous Automated Red Teaming (CART): Mimics advanced threat actors, uncovering gaps in technology, processes, and people of your organization.

●     RedOps: Combines offensive and defensive strategies to provide continuous feedback and make your organization resilient against cyberattacks.

Providing Effective Remediation (Mobilization)

Once vulnerabilities are prioritized, our teams with specific specializations will handle remediations collaboratively.

●    Technology and InfrastructurePatches (Manual): The Infopercept Purple Team addresses vulnerabilities that require manual intervention. They will ensure no critical patches are missed.

●    Technology and InfrastructurePatches (Automated): Invinsense XDR+ automates the application of patches, speeding up the remediation process for less complex vulnerabilities.

●    Code-Level Remediation: The Infopercept Engineering Team resolves vulnerabilities at the code level, thus securing the software in the development stage.

We at Infopercept will ensure that your organization's operational efficiency remains intact while simultaneously also resolving all vulnerabilities through effective remediation.

Basically, it's hitting two birds with one stone.

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