ASCA + EASM: Unifying Control Validation with External Exposure Management

Automated Security Control Assessment (ASCA) and External Attack Surface Management (EASM) solutions are both designed to reduce an organization’s exposure to cyberattacks. ASCA helps to identify control gaps via policy reviews and simulated attacks. EASM identifies and monitors public-facing assets to identify potential vulnerabilities that could be exploited by an attacker.

The goal of both ASCA and EASM is to draw attention to potential risks and vulnerabilities that can be exploited by an attacker. However, instead of being competitors, these two solutions work best in tandem to allow security teams to rapidly identify and address true threats to the business.

The Case for Convergence

Today, companies face a wide range of potential threats as cyber threat actors use any means available to achieve their goal. Modern cyberattacks can exploit both internal misconfigurations and public-facing exposures as threat actors move from initial access to their final objectives.

As a result, relying on independent, siloed tools creates the potential for visibility and security gaps. Additionally, security teams tasked with monitoring and managing multiple point solutions are more likely to become overwhelmed and waste valuable time and resources context switching and manually assimilating data from various sources.

Converging ASCA and EASM enables teams to more efficiently and effectively identify and remediate potential risks within their environments. EASM automatically identifies public-facing systems for ASCA to test and validates ASCA’s findings, reducing the risk of wasted time and effort due to false positive detections.

Unified Data Flow Diagram

ASCA and EASM are complementary solutions that can provide an organization with more comprehensive visibility into and control over its digital attack surface. The workflow for a converged solution would include the following steps:

• Asset Discovery: EASM solutions perform automated, continuous detection of assets within an organization’s public-facing digital attack surface. This inventory defines the scope of assets to be assessed for potential risks and vulnerabilities.
• Control Assessment: The next step is to validate the security controls implemented to protect these assets. This is accomplished via simulated attacks designed to accurately emulate real-world threats.
• Exposure Analysis: Additionally, the ASCA platform will perform an analysis of the vulnerabilities and misconfigurations present within an organization’s public-facing assets. This both ensures protection against real-world threats and verifies that the organization is in compliance with regulatory requirements and corporate security policies.
• Risk Prioritization: Findings from both solutions are prioritized based on the risk that they pose to the organization. This includes leveraging knowledge of critical assets and workflows to assess the likely business impacts if the vulnerabilities are exploited by an attacker.
• Remediation and Mitigation: The identified vulnerabilities and misconfigurations are remediated in order of priority. This can include a combination of manual and automated remediation processes, dependent on the details of the vulnerability in question.
• Continuous Monitoring: These tools continually scan and test the organization’s digital attack surface to identify new threats to the organization and remove those addressed by new security controls. This continuous monitoring ensures that vulnerability lists are up-to-date and properly prioritized despite changes to the organization’s IT environment and cyber threat landscape.

Benefits

EASM and ASCA platforms can both be powerful tools that offer visibility into some of the top threats that attackers pose to an organization’s IT environment. However, combining the two solutions into a single, converged system offers a greater range of benefits than they can achieve separately. 

Some of the most significant gains offered by a converged solution include:

• Unified Visibility: Both EASM and ASCA address exposure management, but they focus on different threats to the business. Converging the two solutions provides more holistic visibility into the organization’s cyber risk exposure.
• Reduced False Positives: By default, ASCA solutions may not perform vulnerability validation, which causes security teams to waste their time on false positives. Combining the two solutions reduces the rate of false positive detections and enhances operational efficiency.
• Faster Mean Time to Respond (MTTR): ASCA and EASM provide a prioritized list of potential threats to the organization. Combined with the ability to automate incident response, this reduces MTTR for identified security visibility.
• Enhanced Efficiency: ASCA platforms and EASM tools both provide key security capabilities, but context switching between standalone tools degrades efficiency. Combining the two solutions into a single platform eliminates this friction and enhances the efficiency of the security team.
• Strategic Planning: Together, ASCA and EASM provide insight into compliance gaps and real-world threat exposure. With access to both of these views, an organization can more strategically design defenses to address both drivers of corporate security policies.
• Continuous Improvement: ASCA platforms identify control gaps and recommend solutions, while EASM provides visibility into vulnerabilities. Combining the two offers a path for continuous improvement as the organization can test and iterate on potential controls and configurations to optimize the effectiveness of its security architecture.

Optimizing Exposure Identification and Management with IONIX

ASCA and EASM offer key capabilities for threat management, and the tools are most effective as part of a converged solution. Deployed as point solutions, an organization risks visibility gaps and degraded operational efficiency due to a reliance on manual processes for data aggregation and incident response.

The IONIX Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) platform offers businesses a holistic view of their cyber risk exposure. Through continuous scanning and emulated attacks, the platform identifies real-world threats and prioritizes them based on the potential impacts on the business. 

To learn more about how IONIX can help your organization manage its risk exposure, sign up for a free demo.