In its new Hype Cycle™ for Security Operations, 2024 Report, Gartner® addresses the role External Attack Surface Management (EASM) solutions play in security leaders’ tech stacks, and explains how EASM can address current security challenges and deliver business value to SecOps teams. Gartner® also features Censys as a named EASM vendor.
Today we’re previewing some of the key findings from Gartner® as they relate to EASM and the SecOps technology landscape as a whole. Ready to jump into the complete findings? You can download your copy of the report here.
SecOps Leaders Address the Complexities of Organizational Exposures
Gaining a full picture of exposures across the entire attack surface remains a challenge for security leaders in 2024. As Gartner® states in its report, “SRM leaders are still, however, challenged with obtaining visibility into organizational attack surfaces and the prioritization of those findings.” Visibility is made more difficult as attack surfaces continued to expand, leaving many organizations with a significant number of exposures to identify and patch.
Gartner® speaks to the factors driving attack surface expansion: “Digital transformation initiatives have accelerated the expansion of enterprises’ external attack surfaces. Cloud adoption, remote/hybrid working, and IT/OT/Internet of Things (IoT) convergence are some key changes increasing exposure to external threats.” In turn, security leaders and their teams are challenged to inventory, prioritize, and patch exposures before attackers take action.
Security leaders know they need to address growing attack surfaces and the blind spots that ensue. In fact, gaining a complete view into the entire attack surface was the number one priority for CISOs surveyed in our State of Security Leadership Report.
That attack surface visibility and vulnerability prioritization remain a challenge for security leaders underscores the need for EASM solutions like Censys Attack Surface Management. Which brings us to the report’s assessment of EASM.
EASM Provides Visibility & Risk Prioritization
Gartner® includes EASM on its Hype Cycle model, and in its analysis of the category, describes how EASM solutions deliver business value to security teams.
According to Gartner®, “EASM helps identify internet-facing assets while also prioritizing discovered vulnerabilities and related threats. It aims to provide risk information relevant to digital assets in the public domain, exposed to threat actors.”
The business impact Gartner® says EASM delivers includes:
- Asset discovery/inventory for external-facing assets and systems
- Monitoring for internet-facing enterprise exposures (cloud services, Internet Protocol addresses, domains, certificates and IoT devices)
- Analysis to assess and prioritize the risks and vulnerabilities discovered
- Indirect remediation, mitigation and incident response through prebuilt integrations with ticketing systems and security orchestration, automation and response tools
Gartner® also explains why security leaders purchase EASM solutions. Visibility and risk prioritization are chief among them, as is, “demand to quantify third-party risks arising from activities such as mergers and acquisitions and integration of supply chain infrastructure.”
Insight into supply chain and third-party risks is an increasingly important objective for security leaders. Since 2018, the number of organizations impacted by supply chain attacks has increased more than 2,600%.
EASM Breaks Through “Peak Inflation”
Gartner® categorizes EASM as an Early Mainstream solution, with multiple established players in the space including Censys ASM. This year EASM has reached an important point in the Hype Cycle™, where vendors who can deliver on expectations will typically break away from those who can’t. EASM is no longer a part of the “peak inflation” section of the Hype Cycle™ at which Gartner® sees buyer expectations at an all-time high.
Instead, buyers are now looking at EASM solutions more discerningly, to ensure a vendor can truly deliver on value promised. Technology solutions in this stage of the Hype Cycle™ typically witness well-equipped vendors thrive and capture more market share, while those who don’t meet buyer expectations will leave the market.
Given EASM’s position in the Hype Cycle™, Gartner® emphasizes that those searching for an EASM solution review providers’ capabilities, specifically: “breadth of coverage (discovery), accuracy, prioritization efficacy, and level of automation in supporting remediation activities, as they vary considerably from vendor to vendor.”
SecOps leaders interested in additional criteria for evaluating vendors may also find The Attack Surface Management Buyer’s Guide worth a read.
For complete insight into the Gartner® Hype Cycle™ findings and what they means for your security team, download your copy of the report today!
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Reference
Gartner, Hype Cycle for Security Operations, 2024, 29 July 2024, Jonathan Nunez, Andrew Davies
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