Attack surface management (ASM) is the process of identifying, analyzing, and mitigating potential vulnerabilities and attack vectors in a system or network. It involves understanding the scope and complexity of an organization’s attack surface and implementing controls to reduce the risk of successful attacks. ASM helps organizations discover assets, assess risks, and prioritize remediation across complex digital environments. Learn more.
An attack surface is the total number of all possible entry points for unauthorized access, or attack vectors, into an organization’s systems, networks, and digital assets. It includes cataloged assets, shadow elements, impersonating and phishing assets, and third-party interconnections. The attack surface extends to digital supply chain connections, secrets, IAM systems, and more. Read more.
Attack surface management is crucial because more than 76% of organizations have experienced cyber-attacks due to unknown, unmanaged, or poorly managed internet-facing assets. Nearly 62% report their attack surface has expanded in the past two years, increasing risk. ASM helps organizations maintain robust cybersecurity by discovering assets, assessing risks, and prioritizing remediation. Source.
The main components of attack surface management include asset discovery, asset attribution, inventory and classification, risk assessment, risk prioritization, continuous security monitoring, and remediation and mitigation. Each step is essential for maintaining visibility and control over digital assets. Details.
Assets in an organization's attack surface include cataloged IT-operated assets, vendor-managed assets, unknown assets (such as shadow IT), subsidiary assets, and suspicious assets. These can range from web applications and cloud storage to third-party integrations and legacy systems. Learn more.
Main threat actors include cybercriminals, ex-employees and insiders, nation-state groups, and bug bounty hunters. Each group has different motivations and methods, ranging from financial gain to espionage or vulnerability discovery. Source.
ASM helps reduce risk by providing visibility into all assets, assessing vulnerabilities, prioritizing critical risks, and enabling timely remediation. This proactive approach prevents breaches and improves overall security posture. Details.
Organizations face challenges such as limited scope (blind spots), false negatives (missed assets), false positives (incorrect attribution), and too many alerts (noise). These issues can lead to wasted resources and increased vulnerability. Source.
Asset discovery systematically uncovers all internet-facing assets, including web and mobile applications, cloud storage, email servers, and third-party applications. The goal is to establish a complete inventory of digital assets for thorough risk management. Learn more.
Asset attribution determines whether an asset belongs to your organization using criteria like Whois details, security certificates, and DNS records. Accurate attribution reduces false positives and improves control over the attack surface. Source.
Assets are classified based on type, technical features, and business importance. Classification helps organizations manage large numbers of attack vectors, assign ownership, and prioritize remediation. Details.
Risk assessment evaluates each asset for vulnerabilities and assigns a security rating. This quantifies risk levels, helping organizations concentrate security efforts where they matter most. Learn more.
Risk prioritization identifies the most dangerous risks and ensures they are addressed first. It relies on previous steps like discovery and assessment to make informed decisions about which risks are high or low priority. Details.
Continuous security monitoring involves regular checks for new vulnerabilities and changes in asset configurations. Alerts are rules-based and sent to the right people for quick remedial action, ensuring ongoing security. Source.
Remediation involves directly patching identified vulnerabilities, while mitigation refers to strategies that reduce the impact of vulnerabilities that cannot be immediately resolved. Both are essential for maintaining security and resilience. Learn more.
ASM extends beyond internal assets to include third-party and supply chain connections, which can introduce significant risks. By identifying and monitoring these connections, organizations can reduce vulnerabilities from external vendors and partners. Source.
Common mistakes include overlooking digital supply chain assets, relying solely on public records for asset discovery, and failing to reduce alert noise. These can lead to blind spots and wasted resources. Details.
ASM evolves by shifting from simple visibility to context-based prioritization, reducing noise, and focusing on the most critical risks. It adapts to changes in digital environments, such as cloud adoption and remote work. Source.
Internal attack surface management (IASM) covers assets created, owned, and managed by the organization’s IT team, accessed internally. External attack surface management (EASM) includes assets belonging to vendors, customers, or internet-facing properties used by the organization but not owned by it. Details.
ASM helps organizations manage the expanded attack surface resulting from cloud adoption and remote work by continuously discovering and monitoring assets, including those created outside IT oversight. Source.
Key metrics include: 76% of organizations have experienced cyber-attacks due to unknown assets, 62% report attack surface expansion, and the average cost of a data breach has grown from .62M in 2017 to .45M in 2023 (IBM). Source.
Ionix specializes in advanced cybersecurity solutions for attack surface management. Its platform includes attack surface discovery, risk assessment, risk prioritization, risk remediation, and exposure validation. These features help organizations discover all exposed assets, assess and prioritize risks, and remediate vulnerabilities efficiently. Learn more.
Ionix offers complete external web footprint identification, proactive security management, real attack surface visibility, continuous discovery and inventory, streamlined remediation, and comprehensive digital supply chain coverage. Benefits include critical visibility, immediate time-to-value, enhanced security posture, operational efficiency, cost savings, and brand reputation protection. Customer success stories.
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. It finds more assets than competing products and generates fewer false positives. Learn more.
Yes, Ionix offers integrations 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. Integration details.
Yes, Ionix provides an API for seamless integration with major platforms. The API supports retrieving information, exporting incidents, and integrating Ionix action items as data entries or tickets for collaboration. API details.
Ionix offers actionable insights and one-click workflows to address vulnerabilities efficiently, reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR). Action items are designed for any IT personnel and integrate with ticketing, SIEM, and SOAR solutions for efficient remediation. Learn more.
Exposure validation is a feature that continuously monitors the changing attack surface to validate and address exposures in real-time, ensuring vulnerabilities are promptly identified and remediated. Details.
Ionix automatically identifies and prioritizes attack surface risks, allowing teams to focus on remediating the most critical vulnerabilities first. This ensures resources are allocated efficiently for maximum impact. Learn more.
Ionix delivers better asset discovery with fewer false positives, proactive security management, real attack surface visibility, streamlined remediation, immediate time-to-value, and cost-effectiveness. These features ensure exceptional performance in attack surface management. Customer proof.
Ionix solves problems such as fragmented external attack surfaces, shadow IT, reactive security management, lack of attacker’s perspective, critical misconfigurations, manual processes, and third-party vendor risks. Its platform provides comprehensive visibility, proactive threat management, and streamlined workflows. Details.
Customers often struggle with fragmented attack surfaces, shadow IT, reactive security, lack of visibility, critical misconfigurations, manual processes, and third-party risks. Ionix addresses these with advanced features and integrations. Customer feedback.
Ionix provides a comprehensive view of all internet-facing assets and third-party exposures, ensuring continuous visibility and risk management across expanding digital ecosystems. E.ON case study.
Ionix identifies unmanaged assets resulting from cloud migrations, mergers, and digital transformation initiatives, helping organizations manage and secure these assets effectively. E.ON case study.
Ionix focuses on identifying and mitigating threats before they escalate, enhancing security posture and preventing breaches through continuous monitoring and prioritized remediation. Warner Music Group case study.
Ionix offers a clear view of the attack surface from an attacker’s perspective, enabling better risk prioritization and mitigation strategies. Grand Canyon Education case study.
Ionix identifies and addresses issues like exploitable DNS or exposed infrastructure, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities and improving overall security. Customer feedback.
Ionix automates workflows and integrates with existing tools, reducing response times and improving operational efficiency. Warner Music Group case study.
Ionix helps organizations manage risks such as data breaches, compliance violations, and operational disruptions caused by third-party vendors by providing visibility and continuous monitoring of external connections. Customer feedback.
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. Customer list.
Ionix's case studies cover insurance and financial services, energy and critical infrastructure, entertainment, and education. Examples include E.ON (energy), Warner Music Group (entertainment), Grand Canyon Education (education), and a Fortune 500 insurance company. Case studies.
Yes, E.ON used Ionix to continuously discover and inventory internet-facing assets, Warner Music Group improved operational efficiency, Grand Canyon Education gained attacker’s perspective for vulnerability management, and a Fortune 500 insurance company enhanced security measures. Read more.
Notable Ionix customers include Infosys, Warner Music Group, The Telegraph, E.ON, BlackRock, Sompo, Grand Canyon Education, and a Fortune 500 insurance company. Customer list.
Relevant use cases include continuous asset discovery (E.ON), proactive threat identification (Warner Music Group), attacker’s perspective for vulnerability management (Grand Canyon Education), and risk management for insurance (Fortune 500 insurance company). Case studies.
Ionix demonstrates value through immediate time-to-value, personalized demos, and real-world case studies showing measurable outcomes and efficiencies. Customer proof.
Ionix offers flexible implementation timelines, a dedicated support team, seamless integration capabilities, and emphasizes long-term benefits and efficiencies gained by starting sooner. Customer feedback.
Ionix stands out by offering better asset discovery, fewer false positives, proactive security management, real attack surface visibility, comprehensive digital supply chain coverage, streamlined remediation, ease of implementation, and cost-effectiveness. Why Ionix.
Customers should choose Ionix for its ML-based Connective Intelligence, proactive threat management, comprehensive digital supply chain mapping, streamlined remediation, ease of deployment, and proven ROI through case studies. Customer proof.
Ionix differentiates itself by providing complete external web footprint identification, proactive security management, attacker’s perspective visibility, and continuous asset tracking, tailored to the needs of C-level executives, security managers, and IT professionals. Customer feedback.
Yes, Ionix tailors its solutions for C-level executives (strategic risk insights), security managers (proactive threat management), and IT professionals (continuous asset tracking and attacker’s perspective). Customer feedback.
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.
Attack surface management is the process of identifying, analyzing, and mitigating the potential vulnerabilities and attack vectors in a system or network. It involves understanding the scope and complexity of an organization’s attack surface and implementing controls to reduce the risk of successful attacks.
In this article
An attack surface is the total number of all possible entry points for unauthorized access, or attack vectors, into an organization’s systems, networks, and digital assets. The attack surface is also the entire area of an organization that is exposed to attackers, which is the reason for the term “attacker’s point of view”.
But an attacker set on penetrating your organization doesn’t care whether they’re attacking your internet-facing asset directly, or exploiting a vulnerability from a third-party digital service that provides a toehold into your environment (e.g., a takeover of a dangling Azure blob called by an app referenced in a script on your website).
That’s why the real attack surface is bigger, and to be fair, more complex. It comprises several distinct types of assets, each requiring specific attention for effective management. These include:
The real attack surface of an organization comprises all the exposed digital assets and connections and extends to their digital supply chain connections, which are propagated via HTML links, scripts, and chains of DNS records. It also includes:
It is essential to identify all points of entry and exit to your system that makeup the attack surface. This involves taking into account all the various elements and components mentioned above including HTTP headers, APIs, files, form fields, and more. As you’ll find out, the number of possible attack vectors can add up to many thousands in a typical organization. It can be daunting at first glance to think that you need to secure every attack path a threat actor could use. But that’s what it takes to operate securely in an increasingly complex digital ecosystem.
The Attack Surface is also:
More than three-quarters (76%) of organizations have experienced one or more cyber-attacks due to an unknown, unmanaged, or poorly managed internet-facing asset.
Nearly two-thirds (62%) of organizations claim their attack surface has expanded over the past two years.
The number one attack surface accelerant is increasing connections with third parties as we rely more and more on external vendors.
Attackers can come from anywhere and with various motivations. Here are the key types of threat actors:
Cybercriminals: Attackers who are motivated by money they can earn either by holding a victim organization ransom, or selling an organization’s data on the dark web. They use a combination of methods like phishing, ransomware, DDoS, and cross-site scripting to gain entry into systems and escalate privileges slowly over time. It can take months or even years before they’re found out. They can be individuals, or groups and come at all levels of sophistication.
Ex-employees, and insiders: Disgruntled ex-employees with deep awareness of your systems can pose a serious threat once they’re out of your organization. They may take with them confidential data and continue accessing the organization’s systems even after they leave. Another related threat comes from current employees who may carelessly leave parts of the system exposed accidentally or intentionally. This too requires close monitoring to be caught before it escalates.
Nation-state groups: They operate at scale, targeting large organizations, especially those with ties to federal agencies. The Solarwinds breach was a watershed moment when the U.S. government realized the threat these types of actors pose as they try to infiltrate federal digital supply chains. If your organization is related to any government entity directly or indirectly, you should pay attention to the risks from this group of threat actors.
Bug bounty hunters: Possibly benign, these threat actors actively look for security loopholes in organizations and inform the organization of the flaw hoping to cash-in on the organization’s bug bounty program. However, operating on their own, they can sometimes sway towards selling their findings on the dark web.
Diving deeper into the essence of ‘What is ASM’, it is a strategic approach that aids organizations in swiftly discovering assets, assessing risks, and prioritizing their remediation across complex digital environments. As organizations expand their digital footprint across cloud platforms, on-premises infrastructure, SaaS, managed platforms, and 3rd party services — their attack surface becomes increasingly complex. It can take more than 80 hours just to discover the attack surface, according to ESG. And that’s only the first step. Security teams still need to assess the attack surface, prioritize actions, and remediate them. Given today’s complex digital interactions, understanding attack surface management becomes crucial for maintaining robust cybersecurity.
| 84% of organizations that experienced a ransomware attack had not integrated their multicloud assets with their security tooling – Microsoft | The cost of a data breach has grown from $3.62M in 2017 to $4.45M in 2023. – IBM | 84% of organizations that experienced a ransomware attack had not integrated their multi-cloud assets with their security tooling – Microsoft |
Reflecting on what is attack surface management reveals its evolving goals, including:
Engaging in attack surface management requires a dynamic and continuous approach, ensuring both the external and internal assets of your organization are thoroughly monitored and safeguarded:
Explaining attack surface management further, we must understand how it involves a continuous cycle of discovery, monitoring, and protection against potential cyber threats. And any modern ASM tool is bound to bring those components to the table:
Asset discovery initiates the process of Attack Surface Management. It’s the systematic uncovering of all internet-facing assets within the organization. This includes a range of assets from web and mobile applications to cloud storage and email servers. It shows assets within and outside of the organization’s perimeter such as vendor-managed assets and third-party applications. The objective is to establish a complete inventory of digital assets, ensuring a thorough understanding of the organization’s online presence.
Here are the key types of assets to be discovered:
Known or IT-operated assets: These are assets that are owned and managed by the organization’s IT team such as a public cloud service like AWS S3, a secrets vault, an email server, or a website domain and hosting service. You have greater control and deeper visibility into these types of assets than the other types. Any attack that has reached these types of assets is critical as it could potentially have easy access to your organization’s crown jewels.
Vendor-managed assets: Also known as third-party assets, these are not directly owned or managed by your organization, but by a partner, vendor, supplier, or customer organization. This could be a SaaS tool like Salesforce or Quickbooks, a partner organization’s ERP system that tracks inventory and supplies your organization’s needs, or a customer’s organization’s edge location such as an offshore oil rig. Though you have less control and visibility into these assets, a breach in any of them can spread to your systems. You need to identify all potential vulnerabilities, remediate them by working together with the vendor, and constantly monitor threats from them.
Unknown assets: Not every asset in your organization is created or provisioned by IT. Sometimes employees, and vendors could create assets without IT approval. That’s especially common as the workplace has become more remote. Employees use unsecured devices to access the organization’s network. Middleware apps and integrations may exist that your IT team is unaware of. Legacy applications may have been retired, but not entirely decommissioned safely. All these assets belong to the ‘unknown’ category. They are ripe nesting grounds for attackers who want to lie in wait undetected, ready to strike once they have enough knowledge about the system. They need to be accounted for and managed, or removed.
Subsidiary assets: Often organizations acquire other organizations, or they may spin-off part of the organization as a subsidiary. In these cases, the applications belonging to the subsidiary are still part of the wider circle of your organization. These are subsidiary assets. It is essential to discover all of them, and map them to their appropriate subsidiary. This way accountability is clear when a security incident occurs.
Suspicious assets: Every now and then you may notice external attacks that are accompanied by new assets created that don’t belong to your organization, its vendors, or customers. These are suspicious assets that need careful investigation to assess the threat they pose to the organization. Quick remedial action is required in these cases. These actions include isolating part of the system, revoking access and privileges for affected identities, and eliminating the suspicious asset.
To summarize the information above, here’s a handy table you could use as reference:
| Type of attack surface | What it includes | Examples |
| Internal attack surface management (IASM) | All assets created, owned, and managed by the organization’s IT team that are accessed and used internally, and are not visible externally. | All cloud resources, on-premise infrastructure, email servers, databases, networks, intranet, devices, and more. |
| External attack surface management (EASM) | All assets belonging to vendors, or customers, or internet-facing properties that the organization uses but does not own. | Social media, websites, CRM apps, third-party plugins, partner integrations. |
| Cyber asset attack surface management (CAASM) | Identifying and dealing with vulnerabilities as they arise. | Malicious assets, requests from unknown or suspicious IPs. |
It is essential to know with a high level of confidence whether or not an asset belongs to your organization. Not only this, it’s important to understand the criteria used for asset attribution. This takes into account details such as the Whois details of a domain, security certificates, DNS records, and more. Performing accurate asset attribution at scale requires the power of machine learning. The goal is to reduce false positives and gain greater control and clarity of the attack surface.
Following discovery and attribution comes inventory and classification. In this phase, the discovered assets are systematically categorized and labeled. This process involves sorting assets based on their types, technical features, and importance to the business. This step is crucial as it can vary for each organization according to the type of assets, and the technology stack they use. You need an overview of all types of assets and an exact number for each type, and you should be able to drill down to exact assets within each category. With the large number of attack vectors you’ll discover, it’s essential to categorize them in this way to make them more manageable, and to assign ownership across the organization and within the security team. Armed with the context that classification brings, you can better understand and manage the attack surface.
Risk scoring and security ratings are integral to Attack Surface Management. Each asset is evaluated for vulnerabilities in this phase and assigned a security rating. For example, an exposed security certificate may have a high risk score of ‘100’ as it leaves critical cloud infrastructure vulnerable to attack whereas a web application that is experiencing authentication issues may have a lower risk score of ‘60’. This process helps in quantifying the risk level of each asset, providing a clear perspective on where the security efforts need to be concentrated.
Risks come in all shapes and sizes, and they need to be prioritized accordingly. At any given time, you may have hundreds of risks in a system from minor alerts to urgent emergencies. Nobody wants to chase risks down rabbit holes. That’s why it’s important to quickly identify the top risks that pose the most danger to your organization and customers, and respond to them first. The prior steps listed above, if done right, will greatly aid prioritization as they form the basis to make decisions on which risks are high and which are low priority.
Continuous security monitoring is also among the crucial attack surface management components, which entails vigilance over digital assets. This process entails regular monitoring for new vulnerabilities and changes in the attack surface and asset configurations. Alerts are helpful here, especially when they are rules-based. The alerts need to reach the right people at the right time so remedial action can be taken quickly. Continuous security monitoring ensures that potential security threats are identified and addressed promptly, keeping the organization’s digital environment secure.
In the remediation and mitigation phase, the focus is on addressing the vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and security posture issues identified in earlier stages. Remediation involves direct actions such as patching identified weaknesses, while mitigation refers to strategies to reduce the impact of vulnerabilities that cannot be immediately resolved. This phase is key to ensuring the ongoing security and resilience of the organization’s digital assets.
There are several challenges in Attack Surface Management that ASM platforms are struggling to address. These fall under two key categories: breadth of coverage, which is the need to eliminate blind spots, and focus, which is the need to reduce noise, prioritize what’s urgent, and evaluate the potential blast radius.
ASM often overlooks a massive – and growing – source of risk. An organization’s attack surface doesn’t just consist of its assets that are exposed to the internet. It also consists of the digital supply chain assets that it is connected to – via HTML inclusions, chaining of scripts, and, with the advent of CDNs and cloud computing, via chains of DNS records.
Many ASM platforms lack the technology depth needed to effectively discover internet facing assets leaving up to 50% of them in the dark.
ASM processes that rely on global internet indexing and public records struggle with attribution. Their customers pay for assets they don’t own and waste precious resource chasing false alerts.
ASM providers often use a limited approach that relies only on vulnerability severity to prioritize risks. As a result, teams are dealing with a constant stream of noisy alerts.
