The cybersecurity industry is littered with buzzwords, technologies and acronyms that can often be overwhelming for security professionals doing their best to keep up and ensure their organizations are being adequately protected. Naturally, it’s the leading analyst, research and consulting agencies that security practitioners listen to the most when it comes to making decisions regarding what technology investments to make for the business.
As one of the leading industry consultancy and research firms, Gartner stated that AI risk and security management were the number one strategic technology trends for 2024. Understandable considering the adoption of AI technology within cybersecurity has been rife on both sides of the battlefield with threat actors actively using AI capabilities to cause more digital destruction, while cybersecurity vendors have looked to AI to enhance defenses.
Gartner’s number two trend from the list was the birth of the Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) ideology to help counter cybersecurity risk. While it may be another acronym to remember, CTEM is here to stay because it is a valuable process to help organizations continually manage cyber hygiene and risk across all digital environments. Given the rapid expansion of modern digital attack surfaces, having automated and ongoing risk management is necessary to aid today’s security departments.
With CTEM, there are five key stages to this concept which are: scope, discover, prioritize, validate and mobilize. The objective is to break these stages into more manageable components for organizations, allowing security teams to focus on the business-critical aspects first. In fact, the CTEM approach should be considered a priority by organizations because it is estimated they would be three times less likely to experience a breach by 2026, underscoring its critical importance.
What are CTEM’s components?
At its core, CTEM is defined as “a five-stage approach that continuously exposes an organization’s networks, systems, and assets to simulated attacks to identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses.” It is a proactive approach to cybersecurity that involves continuously assessing and managing an organization’s exposure to cyber threats and is different from traditional vulnerability management approaches which often fail to provide businesses with an efficient detailed plan of action from the findings.
If anything, security teams are left with long lists of vulnerabilities that need fixing but with blanket remediation guidance, which makes solving the problems and dealing with the real risk even more difficult.
Naturally, many security practitioners will use the CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) for aid because it offers prioritization and evaluation of vulnerabilities in a consumable manner, but where it fails is in its true description of the potential impact to a company if the vulnerability is not rectified.
This is where CTEM excels because it will help businesses prioritize vulnerabilities based on their significance level. Such information gives clarity on where the security gaps are, allowing clear and actionable improvement plans to be made accordingly. Security teams will gain a new-level of comprehension as to their external attack surface and how to continuously manage overall threat exposure. CTEM encompasses creating a continuous process of discovery and remediation powered by real-time threat intelligence. With critical risks often hidden within digital infrastructures, continuous monitoring and management are key when following a CTEM blueprint.
Knowing the key stages of CTEM
The CTEM approach consists of five key stages with each playing an important role in protecting an organization:
1.Scope – allows the business to identify and scope its infrastructure for the critical areas that need to be analyzed and protected.
2.Discovery – after scoping, a list of vulnerable assets is revealed.
3.Prioritization – review the risks flagged and their potential impact on the business.
4.Validation – understand how threat actors can exploit these vulnerabilities, how monitoring systems may react, and if further footholds could be gained.
5.Mobilization – agree on the resolution with actionable goals and objectives while providing effective reporting to convey the urgency to stakeholders.
While these stages may already be incorporated in an organization’s defense, often they are siloed or not continuously in sync. Security departments that want to take their organization along the CTEM journey, leveraging security platforms that harness the power of External Attack Surface Management (EASM), Risk-based vulnerability Management (RBVM), Threat Intelligence and targeted testing, is necessary.
By following the CTEM methodology, organizations can bring these critical components together in a structured approach to systematically address vulnerabilities, prioritize risks, effectively reduce the overall attack surface and protect the digital infrastructure.
