How to Improve Incident Response with Attack Surface Management

In this blog we look at how Attack Surface Management tools can enhance incident response plans.

The importance of incident response

In the eventuality of a cyberattack, businesses need to have a robust plan in place to ensure quick and efficient remediation as well as minimize the impact of the incident. Incident response has become a critical component to ensuring organizations have a powerful cybersecurity strategy that identifies, contains, and mitigates incidents.

When it comes to incident response, the old adage of fail to prepare, prepare to fail could see business operations incur severe delays that not only impact them, but their customers, suppliers, and investors too. That’s why threat assessment and Attack Surface Management (ASM) are essential to anticipating potential risks and vulnerabilities that could trigger incident response plans being set into motion.

What is Attack Surface Management?

ASM is a proactive security practice focused on identifying and managing potential vulnerabilities within an organization’s digital footprint. The attack surface refers to all IT assets that are exposed to the internet, including cloud services, software, apps, and networks.

ASM provides organizations with a comprehensive view and inventory of these assets, including those cybersecurity teams weren’t aware of (aka shadow IT), helping them to understand the risks and potential attack vectors that could be exploited by malicious cybercriminals.

The primary goal of ASM is to discover and identify corporate IT assets and pinpoint any vulnerabilities, such as misconfigurations or outdated software. By having a real-time view of an organization’s external digital footprint, EASM ensures that security teams can detect and remediate weaknesses before they are exploited.

Like incident response, ASM is a critical component of a broader cybersecurity strategy, providing a proactive approach to managing external threats, reducing vulnerabilities, and maintaining a secure, resilient digital environment. So how can incident response and ASM work together to make vulnerability identification faster and more accurate?

Real time threat detection

Incident response plans are not only there for a worse case scenario cybersecurity incident. These plans also include processes that outline ways security teams and employees can help to mitigate the risk of a cyberattack.

ASM tools give organizations a view of all digital assets in their organization, which enables them to see threats emerging in real time. In turn this means that as soon as a threat has been identified, incident response teams can jump into action to ensure remediation is quick, and business operations can continue. Without real time threat detection, remediation may be a lot longer and a lot more expensive – especially if the threat has gone undetected for a long period of time.

Prioritizing alerts and risks

Best-in-class ASM tools will prioritize and categorize the cybersecurity risks or threats a business is facing. Prioritization not only allows cybersecurity teams to deal with the most impactful risks first, it also means certain elements of incident response plans don’t need to be called into action. While all cybersecurity attacks require follow up and incident response, the response to a large scale ransomware attack will be different to a small data breach. This helps incident response teams understand what resource is needed and who is required for remediation, which could ultimately reduce the strain on business resources.

Reducing the time to identify where threats have come from

Post cybersecurity attack, it’s important that the incident response team come together to understand how the attack happened, where the threat came from, and if any parts of the threat still exist. ASM and its asset inventory, as well as threat intelligence, enables a more accurate assessment of the attack’s scope and its impact.

Knowing why the attack happened will help cybersecurity teams to patch any additional vulnerabilities that may still exist to ensure no further attacks relating to that incident occur. The vulnerabilities may have been on a particular server, a specific device, or piece of software, so knowing that particular door has been closed to the attacker will give security teams peace of mind that it can’t be exploited.

Using ASM and threat intelligence, cybersecurity groups can be tracked and monitored giving organizations the bigger picture of the group behind the attack. This will help security teams to put robust plans and measures in place that relate to the tactics, techniques, and procedures a specific group uses.

Improving contextual awareness

ASM can go beyond focusing on the identification of assets. Contextual awareness provides details about how these assets are used, whether they are located internally or externally, and by whom they are accessed. In incident response, these details are important to understand to mitigate future attacks.

A cybersecurity incident may happen because incorrect permissions have been set and someone that shouldn’t has access to sensitive information, or if an employee’s unsecured device has access to the corporate network. This information gives security and incident response teams the information and power they need to put new processes into motion – for example, shutting down access to a particular folder or having a guest wi-fi employees can connect to so their own devices aren’t putting the businesses entire infrastructure at risk.

Insights gained following a cyberattack should be used to continuously improve incident response processes. By establishing feedback loops between incident response organizations can ensure that lessons learned are incorporated into future security strategies.

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