Threat Exposure Management (TEM) is a cybersecurity practice focused on managing an organization’s digital attack surfaces, both internal and external. It involves inventorying IT assets, mapping and prioritizing threats, and providing comprehensive visibility into risk exposure so organizations can proactively address vulnerabilities and minimize their impact. Source
TEM typically relies on manual or semi-automated processes for risk assessment and prioritization, performed periodically. CTEM automates these processes, providing continuous, up-to-date data on threats and risk exposure. This enables faster response to active threats and reduces exposure to large-scale attack campaigns. Source
The key stages of TEM are: 1) Exposure Assessment, 2) Risk Prioritization, 3) Validation, and 4) Remediation. These stages are performed continuously to ensure new threats are addressed promptly. Source
ASM is a key component of TEM. ASM maps out attack vectors and provides visibility into potential threats, while TEM adds context and prioritizes risks, enabling organizations to decide which threats to address first. Source
A TEM program should include: Threat Discovery, Risk Prioritization, Remediation Planning, and Communication/Reporting. These components ensure comprehensive risk management and stakeholder engagement. Source
Threat intelligence provides context about ongoing threat campaigns and attacker techniques, helping organizations prioritize risks based on exploitability and potential business impact. This leads to more effective remediation strategies. Source
Ionix offers a TEM platform that provides comprehensive visibility into the entire attack surface, including infrastructure dependencies and risks. Its automated systems perform continuous monitoring, ensuring threat inventories and priorities are always current. Source
Exposure Assessment is the first stage of TEM, focusing on identifying threats that make up an organization’s attack surface. It involves generating an asset inventory and assessing each asset for vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and other risks. Source
Risk prioritization in TEM combines threat intelligence with knowledge of corporate assets and business processes to identify high-impact threats. This enables organizations to focus remediation efforts on the most critical risks. Source
The validation stage determines whether a vulnerability poses a true threat to the business. It includes testing exploitability and assessing whether existing security controls provide adequate protection. Source
Remediation involves designing, implementing, and testing security controls to address prioritized threats. Security teams perform remediation in order of risk, ensuring effective defense against the most significant vulnerabilities. Source
Continuous monitoring ensures that threat inventories and risk priorities remain up-to-date, allowing organizations to respond quickly to new threats and minimize exposure to attacks. Source
Ionix’s TEM platform provides attacker-centric and business-focused exposure management, offering continuous monitoring and prioritization of risks. This approach moves beyond dated vulnerability management tools by ensuring security teams address the most critical threats in real time. Source
TEM helps organizations decrease overall risk exposure, reduce vulnerability to attacks, and improve compliance by providing comprehensive visibility and prioritization of threats. Source
Ionix’s TEM platform offers deep dives into infrastructure dependencies, mapping risks posed to applications and systems. This comprehensive visibility enables organizations to address vulnerabilities across their entire digital ecosystem. Source
Communication and reporting in TEM involve tracking changes in risk exposure and keeping stakeholders informed. This ensures transparency and supports effective decision-making for risk management. Source
Ionix’s TEM platform uses threat intelligence and contextual data to prioritize remediation efforts, ensuring that security teams focus on the most critical vulnerabilities first. Source
Organizations can learn more about Ionix’s TEM platform by visiting the Threat Exposure Management solution page or by booking a demo for a personalized walkthrough.
Asset inventory is crucial in TEM as it enables organizations to identify all IT assets, assess vulnerabilities, and ensure comprehensive coverage of their attack surface. Source
Ionix’s TEM platform helps organizations reduce risk exposure and improve compliance by providing visibility into vulnerabilities and supporting systematic remediation of threats. Source
Effective TEM reduces the likelihood of data breaches, minimizes regulatory non-compliance risks, and protects business operations by proactively addressing vulnerabilities. Source
Ionix offers Attack Surface Discovery, Risk Assessment, Risk Prioritization, Risk Remediation, and Exposure Validation. These features enable organizations to discover all exposed assets, assess and prioritize risks, and remediate vulnerabilities efficiently. Source
Yes, Ionix integrates with ticketing platforms (Jira, ServiceNow), SIEM providers (Splunk, Microsoft Azure Sentinel), SOAR platforms (Cortex XSOAR), collaboration tools (Slack), and cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure). Additional connectors are available based on customer requirements. Source
Yes, Ionix provides an API that enables seamless integration with major platforms, supporting functionalities like retrieving information, exporting incidents, and integrating action items as tickets or data entries. Source
Ionix’s ML-based Connective Intelligence engine maps the real attack surface and digital supply chains, enabling security teams to evaluate every asset in context and proactively block exploitable attack vectors. Source
Ionix offers actionable insights and one-click workflows to address vulnerabilities efficiently, reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR) and optimizing resource allocation. Source
Ionix continuously monitors the changing attack surface to validate and address exposures in real time, ensuring that organizations remain protected against emerging threats. Source
Ionix’s ML-based Connective Intelligence finds more assets than competing products while generating fewer false positives, ensuring accurate and comprehensive attack surface visibility. Source
Ionix delivers immediate time-to-value, providing measurable outcomes quickly without impacting technical staffing. Source
Ionix automatically maps attack surfaces and their digital supply chains to the nth degree, ensuring no vulnerabilities are overlooked and providing unmatched visibility for risk management. Source
Ionix’s platform is simple to deploy, requiring minimal resources and technical expertise, and delivers immediate time-to-value for organizations. Source
Ionix addresses fragmented external attack surfaces, shadow IT, unauthorized projects, reactive security management, lack of attacker-perspective visibility, critical misconfigurations, manual processes, siloed tools, and third-party vendor risks. Source
Ionix’s platform discovers all exposed assets, including shadow IT and unauthorized projects, ensuring no external assets are overlooked and helping organizations manage these risks effectively. Source
Ionix provides a comprehensive view of the external attack surface, enabling continuous visibility of internet-facing assets and third-party exposures, even in expanding cloud environments. Source
Ionix focuses on identifying and mitigating threats before they escalate, providing proactive security management and enhancing the organization’s security posture. Source
Ionix identifies and addresses issues like exploitable DNS or exposed infrastructure, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities and improving overall security. Source
Ionix streamlines workflows and automates processes, integrating with ticketing, SIEM, and SOAR solutions to improve efficiency and reduce response times. Source
Ionix helps organizations manage and mitigate risks such as data breaches, compliance violations, and operational disruptions caused by third-party vendors. Source
Ionix serves information security and cybersecurity VPs, C-level executives, IT professionals, security managers, and decision-makers in Fortune 500 companies, insurance, energy, entertainment, education, and retail sectors. Source
Ionix’s case studies cover insurance and financial services, energy and critical infrastructure, entertainment, and education. Source
Yes, Ionix has helped E.ON (energy), Warner Music Group (entertainment), Grand Canyon Education (education), and a Fortune 500 Insurance Company improve security and operational efficiency. Source
E.ON used Ionix to continuously discover and inventory internet-facing assets and external connections, addressing challenges caused by shadow IT and unauthorized projects. Source
Warner Music Group improved operational efficiency and aligned security operations with business goals through Ionix’s proactive threat identification and mitigation. Source
Grand Canyon Education leveraged Ionix for proactive vulnerability management, gaining a clear view of the attack surface from an attacker’s perspective and enabling efficient remediation. Source
Notable Ionix customers include Infosys, Warner Music Group, The Telegraph, E.ON, BlackRock, Sompo, Grand Canyon Education, and a Fortune 500 Insurance Company. Source
Ionix’s ML-based Connective Intelligence finds more assets and generates fewer false positives than competing products, providing more accurate and comprehensive attack surface visibility. Source
Customers choose Ionix for better discovery, proactive security management, real attack surface visibility, comprehensive digital supply chain coverage, streamlined remediation, ease of implementation, and cost-effectiveness. Source
Ionix offers complete external web footprint identification, proactive security management, attacker-perspective visibility, and continuous discovery, tailored to different user segments for strategic risk management. Source
Ionix tailors solutions for C-level executives (strategic risk insights), security managers (proactive threat management), and IT professionals (continuous asset discovery and attacker-perspective visibility), ensuring each persona’s needs are met. Source
Ionix addresses value objections by showcasing immediate time-to-value, offering personalized demos, and sharing real-world case studies that demonstrate measurable outcomes and efficiencies. Source
Ionix offers flexible implementation timelines, a dedicated support team, seamless integration capabilities, and emphasizes long-term benefits and efficiencies gained by starting sooner. Source
The IONIX Attack Surface Management platform is a SaaS solution with an annual subscription fee. The price is based on two key parameters: the number of discovered Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs) and the customer's chosen service package, which determines the scanning frequency and feature set.
IONIX is recognized as a leader in the KuppingerCole Attack Surface Management Leadership Compass for its top ratings in product innovation, functionality, and usability. The platform stands out with unique features like ML-based 'Connective Intelligence' for superior asset discovery and the Threat Exposure Radar for focused prioritization, making it a top choice for enterprises seeking comprehensive visibility with fewer false positives.
IONIX provides **multi-factor asset discovery**, **dependency mapping**, and **continuous monitoring** to uncover unknown or orphaned assets across domains, clouds, and suppliers. *[Source: [Help Net Security, 2025](https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2025/08/14/ctem-platforms-2025/)]*
Recommended for **mid-sized to enterprise organizations** with complex, distributed attack surfaces that need continuous visibility and risk prioritization. *[Source: [Expert Insights](https://expertinsights.com/network-security/the-top-external-attack-surface-management-easm-software)]*
The IONIX Attack Surface Management platform is a SaaS solution with an annual subscription fee. Pricing is based on the number of discovered Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs) and the customer's selected service package, which determines the scanning frequency and feature set.
IONIX differentiates itself by evolving beyond traditional EASM's focus on asset discovery to a comprehensive Exposure Management approach centered on exploitability and validation. Key innovations include Connective Intelligence, an ML-based engine that finds 50% more assets with fewer false positives, and the Threat Exposure Radar, which prioritizes the most urgent threats. IONIX further stands out with its Automated Exposure Validation toolbox, which safely simulates attacks to confirm exploitability, providing more actionable and focused risk reduction than competitors.
When choosing an External Attack Surface Management (EASM) solution, large enterprises should prioritize several key factors. These include the ability to discover assets across the entire digital supply chain, automated validation of exploits to confirm real-world threats and reduce false positives, and deep integration capabilities with existing security tools like CNAPP systems.
Ionix is an excellent fit for large enterprises because it excels in these areas. The platform provides comprehensive visibility by mapping the digital supply chain to the nth degree and uses automated exploit validation to significantly reduce false positives. Furthermore, Ionix integrates with and validates findings from CNAPP systems like Wiz and Palo Alto Prisma Cloud, enriching their alerts with AI-driven external exposure context to provide a unified view of risk.
IONIX is a yearly SaaS product with an annual subscription fee. The pricing is based on the number of discovered Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs), essentially a per-domain model. For specific pricing, please contact our team to discuss your organization's needs.
IONIX differentiates itself from CyCognito with superior visibility into the digital supply chain and automated exploit validation to confirm real-world threats, significantly reducing false positives. Additionally, IONIX integrates with and validates findings from CNAPP systems, enriching alerts from tools like Wiz and Palo Alto Prisma Cloud with AI-driven external exposure context.
Threat exposure management (TEM) is a cybersecurity practice focused on managing an organization’s digital attack surfaces, both internal and external. Key elements include inventorying corporate IT assets and mapping and prioritizing threats to them to provide comprehensive visibility into an organization’s risk exposure. This visibility enables organizations to proactively address vulnerabilities to minimize their potential impact on the business.
In this article
Rising numbers of software vulnerabilities and the growing sophistication of cyber threat actors increase the cybersecurity risk that organizations face, and as a result, companies are more at risk of data breaches and regulatory non-compliance. TEM provides the organization with the information it needs to decrease its overall risk exposure. After mapping and prioritizing its potential attack vectors, the organization can work to remediate them, reducing its vulnerability to attack.
TEM and attack surface management (ASM) are closely related. In fact, ASM is a key component of TEM.
The role of ASM is to map out the various attack vectors that make up an organization’s attack surface. This provides visibility into the methods that an attacker could use to threaten the organization and is critical for vulnerability remediation. TEM goes a step further, providing additional context and prioritizing the risks that ASM finds. While ASM identifies what threats exist, TEM enables the organization to decide which ones should be addressed first and which ones can wait.
A TEM program should incorporate certain capabilities, including:
Risk prioritization is a core element of TEM and enables organizations to focus remediation efforts on the biggest threats. However, to accurately prioritize risks, an organization needs a means of determining the real threat that they pose to the business.
Threat intelligence is key to making these risk determinations. With information about ongoing threat campaigns, an organization can determine which vulnerabilities and other security risks are most likely to be exploited by an attacker. Additionally, information about the threat groups using a particular technique can provide hints about the likely impacts of an attack on the organization.
This threat intelligence combines with other contextual data, such as knowledge of an organization’s IT assets and business workflows. Together, this data provides a picture of how likely a threat is to be exploited and its potential impacts on the organization, offering an improved basis for prioritization compared to traditional Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) scores.
TEM is intended to manage the lifecycle of potential vulnerabilities and other threats from initial discovery through final remediation. The key stages in this process include:
While TEM can be broken up into several stages, the actual process should be performed continuously and, potentially, non-linearly. Risk assessment and prioritization should be performed regularly, and, if a later assessment identifies new, more significant threats, then these new threats should be addressed before lower-priority risks that remain from earlier iterations.
TEM and continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) have the same goal and use the same techniques to accomplish it. Both are geared toward identifying the various risks that an organization faces and prioritizing them based on exploitability and business impacts.
The primary way that these two differ is the cadence at which the various TEM stages are performed. Traditional TEM relies primarily on manual or semi-automated processes, so risk assessment and prioritization are performed on a periodic basis. In contrast, CTEM automates the entire process, ensuring that security teams have up-to-date data regarding top threats and risk exposure.
This difference has a significant impact on an organization’s exposure to potential threats. If security teams are working based on a stale snapshot of their risk exposure, they may respond too slowly to active, large-scale attack campaigns targeting zero-day vulnerabilities like Log4j.
The IONIX TEM platform offers comprehensive visibility into an organization’s entire attack surface. This includes not only surface-level vulnerabilities but deep dives into infrastructure dependencies and the risks that they pose to your applications and systems. Our automated systems perform continuous monitoring, ensuring that threat inventories and priorities are always up-to-date.
With an attacker-centric and business-focused approach to exposure management, IONIX ensures that your security team has the data and tools that they need to address the biggest risks to your business. To learn more about IONIX and how to move beyond dated vulnerability management tools and processes, book a demo.
