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What is Continuous Threat Exposure Management?

• In 2022, Gartner coined the term and concept of continuous threat exposure management (CTEM), a five-stage approach that continuously exposes an organization’s networks, systems, and assets to simulated attacks to identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses.​
• CTEM is a systemic approach organizations can use to continually evaluate the accessibility, exposure, and exploitability of digital and physical assets.​
• CTEM is a process specifically designed to help organizations evolve their current threat and vulnerability management (TVM) programs, which lack the efficiency and scalability required to keep up with today’s expanding attack surface.

SCOPING

Start by scoping your organization’s “attack surface” including vulnerable entry points and assets that extend beyond the focus of typical vulnerability management programs such as corporate social media accounts, online code repositories, and integrated supply chain systems.
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DISCOVERY

Discovery identifies visible and hidden assets, vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and associated risks. Identifying assets and vulnerabilities alone doesn't indicate success; precise scoping aligned with business risks is more important.
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PRIORITIZATION

Prioritization should consider urgency, security, availability of compensating controls, tolerance for residual attack surface, and the level of risk to the organization. The focus should be identifying the business's high-value assets and devising a treatment plan that targets those.
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VALIDATION

Confirm if attackers can exploit a vulnerability, analyze potential attack pathways, and assess whether the response plan adequately protects the business. It's also crucial to gain agreement from all stakeholders on the triggers for remediation.
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MOBILIZATION‍

Communicate your CTEM plan to the security team and business stakeholders to ensure understanding. The mobilization effort aims to help teams operationalize CTEM findings by minimizing obstacles to approvals, implementation processes, or mitigation deployments.

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To learn more about how to solve the pervasive vulnerability management problem that plagues organizations big and small, join our live webinar.