Background

Business issues	Technology and governance issues
Accelerating trend towards remote work (spurred greatly by the pandemic)	Increasing need for integrating third-party-owned facilities (e.g., laaS, colo)
Demand for increased digital business reach: online customer engagement/sales/support, supply chain management, partner integration	Rise in hybrid solutions incorporating disparate functions and applications within a single process
Increased reliance on cloud-based applications and other resources	Development teams functioning as separate networks within the organization
Rise of "business technologists" (formerly known as "shadow IT") who align solutions with business needs rather than existing IT infrastructure and policy	"Domain sprawl," in which decades of expanding online domains create mazes of redirects and the potential for unseen back doors
Accelerating interest in using external data streams and IoT sensors to facilitate more rapid and effective business responses to opportunities and requirements	Potential exposure of sensitive information stored on the cloud (e.g., in Azure blobs or S3 buckets) due to misconfiguration/user error or through credentials found on the dark web

Ubiquitous Change Drives ASM Scope and Scale

The attack surface expands in lockstep with digital business demands and advanced technology solutions

The ubiquitous adoption of digital business—where remote workers, extended supply chains, and far-flung customers all interact over the Internet—has increased the digital footprint of nearly every organization. It’s also changed how IT must act to guard corporate applications, data, and users from being compromised.

In response, security leaders have been redoubling efforts to expand and automate ASM. Proficient ASM helps IT stay abreast of issues related to business, technology, and governance that drive security measures:

A Need for Speed

Protecting an ever-expanding, constantly-evolving attack surface—in real time

The business and technology factors on the previous page illustrate why and how the attack surface is expanding, but cybersecurity professionals need to consider another dimension as well: speed. The challenge is not defined only by growth in vulnerable assets but also in the volatility of the environment.

Remote workers continually change location. Digital customers may shop from anywhere on any available device. The volume, variety, and velocity of data feeds grow exponentially, forcing business technologists to react to competitive pressures or opportunities rather than in IT-defined cycles. Developers push out new functions in days and new features in hours or minutes. SaaS providers update their own systems on their individual cycles, without notice; IaaS providers may do the same with respect to equipment or locations for load balancing or other purposes.

These changes occur simultaneously but independently, connected only in their effect on the attack surface. On the other side of the balance, though, budgets do not increase at the pace of threats; skilled security professionals are scarce; and above all, vulnerabilities must be patched up immediately to prevent attackers from slipping through holes in the defense fabric.

Such an imbalance means security teams must make optimal use of scarce resources: discovery tools, external partners, and the policies, training, and technology enabling the SOC to take effective remediation action. A holistic strategy using automation in support of corporate cybersecurity goals is essential to matching ASM to the pace of business and its threats.