Reduction in Material Risk
Implementing CTEM significantly lowers the likelihood of high-impact security incidents by proactively identifying and addressing vulnerabilities and threats, safeguarding critical assets and data.
Welcome to the World of Cyber Threat Exposure Management
Master the attacker’s perspective – reduce business risk.
Navigating the future of predictive cybersecurity
What is Cyber Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)?
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) is a cybersecurity approach aimed at predicting and prioritizing future threats. CTEM is not just technology; it’s a program that involves the continuous assessment of threat exposures combined with asset context and threat intelligence and uses advanced analytical methods to prioritize remediation. This approach, leveraging AI-driven platforms like the Reveald Epiphany Intelligence Platform, transitions organizations from reactive to predictive cyber defense.
“By 2026, organizations prioritizing their security investments based on a continuous exposure management program will be three times less likely to suffer from a breach.”
Gartner, 21 July 2022
Implement a Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) Program)
I Already Have a Vulnerability Management Program, do I Need CTEM?
Vulnerability Management (VM) is a core component of CTEM, but CTEM programs offer a broader scope that solves many of the challenges that organizations face with VM, such as:
Vulnerability Fatigue
VM solutions collect and report on tens of thousands of vulnerabilities, burying security teams in far more data than they can ever act upon.
Poor Prioritization
VM solutions tend to have static prioritization models, which fail to take into account the real and dynamic risk associated with vulnerabilities, and the potential for business impact.
Poor Business Alignment
Many organizations struggle to align vulnerability reports with business units and asset criticality, creating patchwork approaches to remediation.
Benefts of implementing CTEM
The implementation of Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) brings enormous benefits to an organization's overall cybersecurity program, including:
Enhanced Threat Prediction and Prioritization
With its continuous monitoring and analysis, CTEM provides advanced insights into potential future threats, enabling organizations to preemptively address vulnerabilities and prioritize threats based on their potential impact.
Improved Operational Efficiency
CTEM streamlines the process of identifying, assessing, and mitigating risk, leading to more effective use of resources and faster response times, thereby enhancing overall cybersecurity operations.
Minimization of Alert Fatigue
By efficiently identifying and guiding remediation of the most critical threats, CTEM reduces the flood of security alerts, enabling security teams to focus on critical issues and strategic goals.
Real-time Security Posture Management
CTEM offers ongoing assessment and management of an organization’s security posture, allowing for immediate adjustments and proactive measures to maintain robust defense against evolving cyber threats.
CTEM Turns effort into outcomes
Rather than simply chipping away at endless mountains of vulnerabilities, CTEM helps you prioritize and measure efforts in terms of reduced business risk.
By implementing a CTEM program, organizations are continuously aware of where they are exposed, and the best actions they can take to reduce that exposure.
THE 5 PHASES OF CTEM
Scoping
This initial phase involves identifying and understanding the organization's attack surfaces, determining what is critical to the business, and defining the scope of the CTEM program.
Discovery
This phase focuses on uncovering assets, identities, and resources, and evaluating their risk profiles. It involves enumerating permissions for users and services, identifying vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, and other security weaknesses.
Prioritization
In this phase, the program identifies the most significant risks and prioritizes them for remediation. This requires evaluating threats based on their impact, likelihood of occurrence, and their potential to affect critical business processes.
Validation
This phase focuses on uncovering assets, identities, and resources, and evaluating their risk profiles. It involves enumerating permissions for users and services, identifying vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, and other security weaknesses.
Mobilization
This phase focuses on making changes to the environment to mitigate risk - patching vulnerabilities, addressing IAM misconfigurations, resolving control configurations etc. Mobilizing the many teams and stakeholders to effectively mitigate risks.
In order to accomplish these phases, Gartner suggests organizations need a number of core capabilities that make up an effective CTEM program:
Continuous Monitoring and Assessment
CTEM involves persistent monitoring of the network and systems to identify assets, identities, vulnerabilities, and misconfigurations. This continuous assessment is crucial for identifying potential exposures early and accurately.
Identity Risk Analysis
This component focuses on assessing risks associated with user identities and access within an organization, helping to pinpoint vulnerabilities related to user credentials and privileges.
Targeted Remediation Instructions
Once risks are identified and prioritized, CTEM focuses on developing and implementing targeted remediation strategies. These strategies are designed to specifically address identified vulnerabilities in a way that reduces the maximum risk with the minimum effort.
Attack Path Analysis
A critical component of CTEM, attack path analysis involves understanding and mapping out the potential routes an attacker could take to compromise the system. This analysis helps in predicting and prioritizing remediation of complex exposures.
Risk Analysis and Prioritization
CTEM prioritizes risks by predicting their potential impact on the organization. This process involves evaluating the severity of different vulnerabilities using sophisticated methods such as AI, machine learning, and statistical analysis, and focusing resources on the most critical threats.
Challenges and Considerations in CTEM
It’s important to also consider the challenges and key considerations that organizations face when implementing a CTEM program. Despite its advantages, CTEM presents specific hurdles that need careful management and strategic planning.
Balancing Resource Constraints
One of the main challenges in implementing CTEM is achieving thorough coverage of potential threats while managing limited resources. Organizations often struggle to allocate sufficient financial, technological, and human resources to cover all aspects of threat exposure management comprehensively.
Integrating Diverse Data Sources
CTEM relies on the integration and analysis of data from various sources, including internal vulnerability management systems, asset databases, identity stores, external intelligence feeds, and many more. Effectively consolidating and interpreting this diverse data to gain actionable insights can be complex and resource intensive.
Training and Expertise
CTEM involves persistent monitoring of the network and systems to identify assets, identities, vulnerabilities, and misconfigurations. This continuous assessment is crucial for identifying potential exposures early and accurately.
Keeping Up with Evolving Threat Landscapes
CTEM involves persistent monitoring of the network and systems to identify assets, identities, vulnerabilities, and misconfigurations. This continuous assessment is crucial for identifying potential exposures early and accurately.
Reveald Offers a Clear Path to Predictive Cybersecurity
Reveald is leading the way toward next-generation cyber defense by transitioning organizations from reactive to predictive strategies with our AI-powered Epiphany Intelligence Platform. Reveald’s unique combination of technology platform coupled with expert managed services is helping our customers to get off the vulnerability management treadmill and start reducing material risk across their organization.
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