Continuous Threat Exposure Management, or CTEM, is a proactive security framework/program in which organizations continuously monitor, evaluate, and actively mitigate security risks across their IT infrastructure. The overarching objective of CTEM is to maintain an adaptive cybersecurity posture, empowering organizations to actively and manage their cyber exposure by prioritizing risk mitigation strategies.
Continuous Threat Exposure Management is essential to a strong security posture in an evolving threat landscape. As cyber-attacks grow in numbers and sophistication, the risk associated with vulnerabilities grows more substantial, so organizations need to be adaptive in addressing them.
Technologies like vulnerability management tools can help identify vulnerabilities with CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) scores, but they cannot cover all risks. While they provide better protection by combining security tools like scanners, threat intelligence, and remediation workflows, they often miss critical issues which are frequently exploited, such as misconfigurations, identity problems, and Active Directory vulnerabilities. Despite advancements, organizations still struggle to manage the full scope of risks effectively, and this is what makes CTEM so important.
By embracing CTEM, organizations can fully manage their cyber exposure by identifying and assessing the risk of vulnerabilities and threats that compromise their exploitable attack surface. Subsequently, they can prioritize remediations based on true business impact to ensure sensitive digital assets are protected at all times.
The five stages of Continuous Threat Exposure Management are as follows:
CTEM is a cyclical approach, so the process begins anew each time the cycle is completed. In this way, organizations can see the attack surface and enhance security posture by identifying and addressing problematic areas. The ability to recognize exposures and their potential exploitation is crucial for gaining a true attacker’s perspective.
The benefits of Continuous Threat Exposure Management include the following:
What are some best practices for implementing Continuous Threat Exposure Management?
There are several best practices for implementing CTEM.
Firstly, organizations should establish clear objectives for CTEM that align with the organization’s business objectives. This will ensure that security teams can prioritize the assets with the highest impact on the organization’s operations.
Secondly, when monitoring a high volume of threats as part of a CTEM strategy, organizations should seek to manage noise through prioritization. Since not all exposures necessarily require remediation, because they’re not leading to assets that have any exploitable value, security teams should seek to leverage automated security solutions to prioritize threats that pose a risk to critical assets from non-pressing exposures.
Additionally, organizations should seek to foster collaboration between teams, stakeholders, and third parties. This helps ensure that CTEM strategies are implemented holistically and align with the long- and short-term goals of the organization.
In a constantly evolving threat landscape, organizations must strive to remain as adaptive and responsive as possible. CTEM is a proactive cybersecurity framework that can enable them to do that by continuously identifying, assessing, and mitigating security risks in real time. By implementing the principles and practices of CTEM, organizations can effectively prioritize and remediate threats to safeguard their critical assets, enhance their threat resilience, and strengthen their overall security posture.
Many elements comprise CTEM as a security approach. Fundamental elements include real-time network monitoring and exposure detection, proactive risk management, prioritized remediation and mitigation, and continuous improvement.
CTEM differs from traditional cybersecurity approaches in its proactive and cyclical nature. Rather than utilizing periodic assessments and reactive security measures, CTEM emphasizes continuous monitoring, detection, assessment, and management of threats to enhance agility.
CTEM helps improve cybersecurity posture by providing organizations with a method for achieving greater threat visibility, quicker incident response, and more comprehensive risk management. As such, CTEM can play a major role in reducing the likelihood and impact of possible attacks.
In its approach to CTEM, an organization should begin with an overall assessment of security capabilities and potential areas for improvement. It should then set clear CTEM objectives that align with its business objectives and create a roadmap for the implementation of CTEM principles and the allocation of resources.
Continuously identify and address security threats.