It CTEM has been hailed by analysts as the next generation to more common VM programs. CTEM is required due to the ever-evolving threats in the IT systems environment. It’s also fluid since over 50 new CVEs are inputted on a daily basis, and threat actors begin to probe the vulnerability within 15 mins of the disclosure. In today’s threat environment and with respect to more advanced and resourceful threat actors.
Organizations often have no idea of the extent of their exposure on the Internet and which hosts, systems, services, or applications are insecure or misconfigured. In this article we will provide a basic understanding of what CTEM is and why the classical approach to vulnerability management must evolve to address the threat exposure problem. And why it is crucial for the CISOs to start transitioning from vulnerability management programs to the CTEM.
What is CTEM?
CTEM stands for Continuous Threat Exposure Management. It is also an aggressive and all-encompassing method used to detect potential risks an organization is likely to encounter inclusive of risks like vulnerability, compromise, setting mistakes, and exposed data. CTEM encompasses the full outer surface of an organization’s periphery and employs threat intelligence to risks’ characteristics to prioritize and mitigate. CTEM leaves users with more elaborate and proactive methods that can be used in identifying threats in an organization. This goes beyond CVE vulnerabilities and incorporates a wide array of other threats that range from misconfigurations and exposed information among others.
What is Vulnerability Management?
Vulnerability Management can be defined as the practice of identifying and applying fixes to the known weaknesses in a set of devices which is revealed by a predefined list of assets. Vulnerability Management is usually carried out periodically and in a reactive manner which implies that the process only looks for and rectifies the vulnerability once it has been made public. Threat intelligence that contextualizes the threats and their probability for occurrence is also notably absent from Vulnerability Management.
How CTEM differs from Vulnerability Management?
CTEM differs from Vulnerability Management in several ways:
Scope
Vulnerability Management is commonly used for watching for specific set CVEs and scanning a list of predefined assets. This approach was good when organizations had a rather fixed asset portfolio list and threat landscape. However, modern networks are built with more devices and systems in the cloud. More employees connecting remotely using technologies, and growing incidence of IoT/OT. That is why the scope of VM programs is simply too small and can coexist with unmitigated threats only.
CTEM also broadens the search for threats by focusing on the entire external exposure when defining the attack surface. This means that when it comes to the identification of the potential threats an organization is faced with. CTEM does a better job in giving an overall picture.
Frequency
Vulnerability management is usually conducted through constant assessments accompanied by standard tests yearly or more frequently depending on the organization’s circumstances. Such as red-teaming or penetration testing. This approach was possible only when changes within environments were irregular, but since organizations have gone digital. This is not feasible. While CVA is an ongoing process that searches for threats in real-time, CTEM is an ongoing process, as well.
CTEM helps an organization monitor threats from a period they are just developing and continued monitoring when compared to waiting for scan or test time. CTEM also helps the organizations to confirm the efficiency of security controls and remedial activities on a continuous basis and not on the basis of a report or audit.
Threat Intelligence
Threat intelligence is not strong linked to vulnerability management, which can prevent the prioritization and the contextualization of the threats detected by the tool. Generic scoring systems, like CVSS which may be used by VM programs. Do not reflect the actual risk or impact of the vulnerability to an organization. An example of how CTEM uses threat intelligence data is to enhance the threat information gathered by CTEM. And present threat information that is more valuable and helpful.
CTEM utilizes the threats it identifies in relation to the current threats, industry, geographical location of the organization. And the existing security frameworks and mechanisms that are in use within the organization. Like most organisations, CTEM considers the likelihood of adversaries, exploitability, or threats’ severity and likelihood in formulation of its threat intelligence configurations. Thus, CTEM allows organizations to pay attention to the main and essential threats only and minimize the amount of interference and false alarms.
Automation
For remediation, vulnerability management often requires manual intervention, and this causes considerable delays and many potential mistakes. VM programs of the current period are partially reliant on human analysts to analyze the scan results. To verify the findings and assign and monitor the tasks themselves. This can cause the actuators to become a bottleneck and take time to rectify the situation thus widening the attack window.
CTEM often entails automated response procedures that can make the remediation process quicker and more effective than using people. It can easily form its workflows with other similar security tools and products through which it can initiate the alert. A ticket, a patch, or a change in the configuration as per the data and intelligence that is received from CTEM. It can also automatically verify the remediation actions together with informing about their efficacy and consequences.
Why CTEM is better than Vulnerability Management?
The capability that CTEM possesses trumps the approach that Vulnerability Management has to offer in the following ways:
- CTEM is preferable to Vulnerability Management since it presents a broader, more anticipatory perspective of the organization’s threats. Minimize the attack vectors and likelihood of being compromised by following the mantra of zero trust. Where you focus on the major threats before they reach the opponent’s hands.
- Enhance the security situation as well as the conformity level by making certain that the total of the assets are safe and up to code.
- Reduce the time and cost of manual intervention and implement the solution. And perform the remediation as a part of integration with the other security solutions.
- Help decision makers provide protection and acquire awareness of external exposure. As well as the threats posed by the world wide web using threat intelligence and analysis.
Conclusion
Continuous threat exposure management can be defined as an enhanced threat identification and threat handling process compared with vulnerability management. CTEM offers a wider, deeper, and faster perspective on the organization’s vulnerability. And allows organizations to filter and address the most applicable and severe threats. Another feature of CTEM is threat intelligence and automation to optimize the threat assessment and treatment procedure. Therefore, by implementing CTEM organizations will be adding value to their security positon towards current malefactors and incidents. And will decrease the likelihood of breaches.
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