In the dynamic landscape of cybersecurity, staying ahead of threats requires an evolved approach to managing security tools, and preventing and detecting potential attacks. Traditional vulnerability management and breach-and-attack simulation tools have proven to be insufficient when it comes to keeping up with changing attacker techniques and managing increasingly complex IT and security infrastructures. Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) provides a proactive, iterative approach to evaluating and continuously refining and improving an organization’s security controls to optimize its cyber defense.
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)
What is CTEM?
Continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) is a proactive set of processes and capabilities that allow enterprises to evaluate the accessibility, exposure, and exploitability of their digital and physical assets. It also supports the continuous improvement and strengthening of their defenses and resilience against relevant threats and attacker techniques and procedures. A CTEM process is designed to continuously monitor, assess, prioritize, and resolve issues by reducing threat exposure and exploitability. The objective of CTEM is to provide consistent, actionable remediations and improvements that business stakeholders can understand and architecture teams can act upon.
Unlike traditionally reactive processes like vulnerability management, CTEM focuses on anticipating threats before they can be exploited. According to Gartner, organizations that prioritize security investments based on a continuous exposure management program will be three times less likely to suffer a breach.
A successful CTEM approach will look to reduce threat exposure by building a risk reduction strategy that continuously evaluates and improves current security control posture and efficacy of prevention and detection controls across endpoint, cloud, identity, network, and more.
Benefits of CTEM:
- Improved cyber resilience through comprehensive risk assessment and continuous evolution and improvement of security controls and posture, covering both prevention and detection.
- Proactive risk management, enabling the anticipation and mitigation of threats and attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) before they materialize.
- Speed and adaptability to keep up with evolving cybersecurity threats and the increased complexity of IT and security infrastructures.
- More actionable insights to more accurately measure risk and exposure for informed decision-making.
- Strategic alignment of security measures with unique business goals and priorities.
- Cost savings through the proactive identification and mitigation of security risk and exposures.
How Detection Controls Drive Holistic Threat Exposure Management
Detection is often viewed as a reactive activity in security, but the development and management of detection controls can be a critical component of a proactive cyber defense. Detection Posture Management (DPM) exemplifies this approach, as it involves proactively measuring, evaluating, and improving an organization’s ability to detect relevant threats and attacks across systems and environments. DPM can play a key role in maximizing the effectiveness of a CTEM program by optimizing detection coverage and fidelity to continuously reduce an organization’s exposure to threats.
Compensating Controls: Complete Visibility into an Organization’s Exposure
Another important area of CTEM, and one where detection plays an important role, is with compensating controls. Compensating controls are alternative security measures designed to mitigate risk when primary controls – such as firewalls, encryption, or intrusion detection systems – are ineffective, impractical, or unavailable. They act as a safety net, stepping in when the ideal security measures cannot be implemented due to factors like budget limitations, operational challenges, or legacy system constraints.
Think of compensating controls as alternative strategies. If you cannot deploy one security solution, you compensate by using other measures – such as stricter access controls, enhanced monitoring, or manual processes – to reduce risk effectively.
In today’s rapidly changing cybersecurity landscape, compensating controls are indispensable. They enable organizations to maintain a higher level of cyber resiliency and a robust security posture without overhauling their entire infrastructure each time a new vulnerability emerges.
Preventing as much as possible is always the goal, but 100% prevention in cybersecurity is unrealistic. That is why the only way to accurately assess your security risk and exposure is to look beyond prevention and include compensating controls, including detection. Specifically, this enables security teams to have additional controls at the same point or further along the attack chain to detect threats and their TTPs when other controls have been bypassed or proven ineffective.
Compensating Controls Real-World Example – Exploitation of Perimeter Devices
Perimeter devices such as VPN gateways and firewalls from vendors like Fortinet, Check Point, Palo Alto Networks, F5, etc. have become prime targets for attackers. These devices often sit at the network’s edge, making them a critical line of defense but also a high-value target. Exploitation of vulnerabilities in these devices, whether through known flaws or zero-days, can lead to significant breaches.
For example, attackers may exploit an unpatched vulnerability in a VPN gateway to gain initial access to a network. Even if the specific vulnerability hasn’t been publicly disclosed or patched, anomalous post-exploitation activities on the compromised device can be detected through well-tuned detection controls. These anomalies might include unusual configuration changes, unexpected outbound traffic from the device, or unusual administrative logins at odd hours or from suspicious IP addresses.
In such cases, relying solely on preventive measures like patching or signature-based blocking isn’t enough, especially when vulnerabilities remain undisclosed or patches take time to deploy across an organization. Detection controls, such as those integrated into SIEM systems, can act as a critical compensating measure. They help identify and drive response to abnormal behaviors associated with exploitation, allowing security teams to mitigate risks even before a patch is available or fully implemented.
This highlights the importance of understanding and managing detection controls as part of a comprehensive exposure management strategy. During the gap between the exploitation of a vulnerability and the deployment of a fix, detection controls can serve as a vital layer of defense, ensuring that suspicious activity is identified and addressed promptly. Security teams must continuously refine and enhance these controls to detect and respond effectively to potential threats, reducing the likelihood of undetected breaches during such critical windows.
Reducing Threat Exposure by Optimizing Prevention and Detection Controls
Continuous Threat Exposure Management programs thrive when both prevention and detection controls are optimized, creating a more holistic and adaptive cyber defense strategy. By strengthening preventive measures like endpoint, cloud, and identity, organizations reduce the likelihood of successful attacks. However, no system is impervious, which is where detection controls become critical. Optimizing both ensures that while potential threats are minimized at the outset, any breaches or anomalies that bypass preventive measures are quickly detected and mitigated. This dual approach enables CTEM to provide continuous, real-time insights into exposure and threat activity, ensuring a resilient security posture capable of adapting to the evolving threat landscape.