The modern-day threat landscape requires enterprise security teams to think and act beyond traditional cybersecurity measures that are purely passive and reactive, and in most cases, ineffective against emerging threats and sophisticated threat actors. Prioritizing cybersecurity means implementing more proactive, adaptive, and actionable measures that can work together to effectively address the threats that most affect your business.
Ideally, these measures should include the implementation of a Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) program, Vulnerability Management, and Attack Surface Management (ASM), which are all very different from one another, yet overlap. With CTEM, vulnerability management, and ASM, it’s not a question of which one is “better” or “more effective”, as they complement each other uniquely. By adopting all three, security teams get the continuous visibility and context they need to proactively boost defenses, giving them a leg up over threat actors.
Read on to discover how the CTEM vs VM vs ASM triad could be the optimal investment for your security-aware organization.
What is Vulnerability Management (VM)?
Vulnerability management is the process of identifying, analyzing, remediating, and managing cybersecurity vulnerabilities across an organization’s IT ecosystem. A well-defined VM process is crucial to proactively identifying and resolving vulnerabilities before adversaries can exploit them to better defend organizations against common cyberattacks.
VM is an ongoing process that typically includes the following phases:
- Vulnerability discovery
- Vulnerability assessment and prioritization
- Vulnerability resolution
- Vulnerability reassessment
- VM improvement
What is Attack Surface Management (ASM)?
Attack Surface Management or ASM is the practice of continuously identifying and prioritizing assets at their most critical attacker entry points across the organization’s attack surface. It is like VM in the sense that both aim to discover, analyze, remediate, and monitor the vulnerabilities within an organization’s attack surface.
However, ASM takes a broader more holistic approach to enterprise security. So where the main goal of VM is to identify and manage known vulnerabilities within known assets, ASM aims to discover and manage all potential entry points for attackers – including those that are unknown.
In addition, ASM enables organizations to identify and address vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. ASM tools are intelligent since they can not only discover exposed assets but also provide deep contextual insights into those assets and their critical attacker entry points. By providing deeper contextual insights across the entire attack surface, ASM complements VM and helps strengthen security defenses.
As with VM, ASM is an ongoing and cyclical process that typically includes multiple, overlapping phases:
- Asset discovery
- Asset inventory and classification
- Vulnerability identification and risk assessment
- Asset prioritization and risk scoring
- Vulnerability remediation and reporting
What is Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)?
Continuous Threat Exposure Management, often shortened to CTEM, is a systematic approach to discover, prioritize, validate, and respond to security exposures. A CTEM program provides the structure and framework modern organizations need to proactively and continually monitor their external surfaces, assess the vulnerabilities in those surfaces, and mobilize responses and cross-functional resources to reduce security risks.
Effective, ongoing CTEM is a five-stage process. These stages are:
- Scope for cybersecurity threats (identify the internal and external attack surfaces)
- Discover assets and build a risk profile for each asset
- Prioritize threats by urgency, security, and level of risk
- Test and validate vulnerabilities with real-world attack simulations
- Mobilize resources for vulnerability and threat remediation
CTEM, VM, and ASM: Overlapping and Complementary Security Approaches
It’s important to understand that CTEM is not a stand-alone tool or a single technology-based solution. Rather, it is a holistic, proactive, and iterative approach to security that leverages multiple tools and technologies to deliver improved security outcomes.
As we have seen, the CTEM lifecycle begins with identifying the organization’s attack surfaces. Here’s where risk-based ASM solutions and VM tools come in. VM tools facilitate vulnerability identification and prioritization, but ASM tools provide visibility into all exposed assets – both known and unknown – and their associated risks.
The most effective CTEM programs combine VM and ASM techniques and tools. They also incorporate other offensive security techniques like Pen Testing as a Service (Top Pen testing Companies), red teaming, and Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV).
These technologies mutually reinforce each other to inform risk identification and remediation, manage the organization’s attack surface, and strengthen its security posture. Together, they help to create a holistic CTEM program that provides:
- Real-time visibility into assets and risk exposure for continuous protection
- Context- and risk-informed vulnerability prioritization for more effective resource allocation and remediation
- Real-world vulnerability simulations that highlight the potential impact of the real-world exploitation of identified vulnerabilities
- Centralized insights and actionable recommendations to manage security exposures across the entire digital environment
Optimize your Security Posture with BreachLock’s Unified Platform for CTEM
As we have seen, CTEM, VM, and ASM are not isolated processes or programs. Rather, they overlap with each other to provide more comprehensive visibility into the threat landscape and stronger protection from all kinds of attacks. However, managing different point solutions for VM, ASM, PTaaS, etc. can be complicated and burdensome for security teams.
BreachLock seamlessly consolidates VM, ASM, and PTaaS solutions into a unified interface to support your holistic CTEM program. It can also consolidate your assets, vulnerabilities, and test findings, map your entire attack surface, unify security testing, and validate attack paths to both ease and power your security processes.
BreachLock’s integrated CTEM approach provides a single source of truth that will empower you to:
- Get a complete view of the attack surface
- Accelerate vulnerability and threat remediation
- Scale with your environment, no matter its size or complexity
- Enable faster, context-driven decision-making
- Get a clear, comprehensive view of security investments and outcomes
- Mature your security program
Discover how BreachLock’s solutions align with the five-stage CTEM framework to elevate your defense strategy. Contact us for a free demo.
About BreachLock
BreachLock is a global leader in offensive security, delivering scalable and continuous security testing. Trusted by global enterprises, BreachLock provides human-led and AI-powered attack surface management, penetration testing, red teaming, and adversarial exposure validation (AEV) services that help security teams stay ahead of adversaries. With a mission to make proactive security the new standard, BreachLock is shaping the future of cybersecurity through automation, data-driven intelligence, and expert-driven execution.
Know Your Risk. Contact BreachLock today!
