January 1, 1970
According to a Cisco CISO Benchmark survey, 17% of organizations had 100,000 or more daily security alerts in 2020, and its trajectory has only increased.
Source: Cisco 2020 CISO Benchmark Survey
2021 only followed this trend with a record year of newly-discovered CVEs – 20,137 to be exact, topping the 2020 record of 18,325. More software and an increased digital footprint equals a record number of vulnerabilities. Aside from this being an indicator of the exposure growth in an organization’s attack surface, this unmanageable number makes the defender’s job even more difficult, and also leads to burnout among cybersecurity professionals.
It’s clear that vulnerable does not equal exploitable. In fact, the common ratio between vulnerable in theory and exploitable in practice is 1:100. So how can security teams focus on the true weakness in the vulnerability hay stack? The answer lies in the context of a vulnerability, its compensating controls, and the data it leads to.
In this article, we’ll provide steps security professionals can take today in order to identify the true risk their organization faces – how to pinpoint the exploitable vulnerabilities out of the lot.
Below are 4 steps to knowing your exploitable attack surface
Enter Automated Security Validation
Automated security validation is an advanced approach to testing the integrity of all cybersecurity layers, combining continuous coverage and risk prioritization for effective mitigation of security gaps.
This approach provides a true view of current security exposures by emulating real-life attacks, enabling an impact-based remediation plan rather than chasing thousands of vulnerabilities.
Security teams can know exactly where they stand and confidently strive towards maximum security readiness.
When evaluating security validation platforms make sure to check these boxes:
The question that needs answering is whether you know your organisation’s true security risk at any given time. Do you know where the organisation’s weakest links are so they can be remediated or mitigated before an attacker leverages them towards an attack.
If you’re ready to validate your organisation against the latest threats including ransomware strains and Log4Shell vulnerabilities, request your free security health check today.
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