External Threat Landscape Visibility
In cybersecurity, External Threat Landscape Visibility refers to an organization's ability to perceive, understand, and monitor its digital assets and potential vulnerabilities from the perspective of an external attacker. It's about knowing what information, systems, and entry points are exposed to the public internet, and therefore, to malicious actors.
Here's a detailed breakdown:
Beyond the Perimeter: Unlike internal security, which focuses on assets within the network, external threat landscape visibility looks outward. It aims to see what attackers see – open ports, misconfigured services, forgotten web applications, publicly accessible data, and even exposed code repositories.
Asset Discovery (Known and Unknown): A crucial aspect is identifying all internet-facing assets. This includes explicitly managed assets like corporate websites and known cloud instances and "shadow IT" – systems, applications, and cloud services spun up by employees or departments without central IT oversight. These unknown assets often become significant security blind spots.
Vulnerability and Misconfiguration Identification: Once assets are identified, the next step is to assess their security posture. This involves scanning for common vulnerabilities (e.g., unpatched software, weak authentication, insecure configurations) and misconfigurations (e.g., publicly exposed databases, open S3 buckets, exposed API endpoints) that attackers could exploit.
Digital Footprint Mapping: This extends to understanding the organization's broader digital presence, including domains, subdomains, related IP addresses, and digital certificates. It also encompasses publicly available information that could be used for social engineering or reconnaissance, such as employee data on social media or company information in public records.
Brand and Reputation Monitoring: External visibility also involves monitoring for brand impersonations, phishing attempts, and fraudulent domains that mimic the organization's brand, often used in attacks against customers or employees. This includes looking for typosquatting domains and malicious mobile applications.
Third-Party and Supply Chain Exposure: Modern organizations rely heavily on third-party vendors and cloud services. External threat landscape visibility extends to understanding the security posture of these external dependencies, as a vulnerability in a supplier's system can directly impact the organization.
Threat Intelligence Integration: This visibility must be enriched with current threat intelligence to understand the landscape truly. This includes information on emerging attack techniques, known exploit kits, active threat actor groups, and compromised credentials found on the dark web that could be used against the organization.
Continuous Monitoring: The external threat landscape is constantly changing. New assets come online, configurations change, and new vulnerabilities are discovered. Therefore, external threat landscape visibility is not a one-time assessment but an ongoing process.
Attacker Perspective: The key differentiator is adopting the "attacker's mindset." It's not just about what you think is exposed, but what is discoverable and exploitable from the outside world without internal access or credentials. This unauthenticated perspective is crucial for identifying real-world risks.
External Threat Landscape Visibility provides a holistic, outside-in view of an organization's digital exposure. It allows security teams to identify, prioritize, and mitigate risks that could be exploited by external adversaries, thereby strengthening the overall cybersecurity posture.
ThreatNG, as an all-in-one external attack surface management, digital risk protection, and security ratings solution, directly addresses the need for comprehensive External Threat Landscape Visibility. It achieves this by identifying and assessing an organization's digital footprint from a purely external, unauthenticated perspective, mirroring how an attacker would view it.
Here's a detailed breakdown of how ThreatNG helps with External Threat Landscape Visibility:
External Discovery: ThreatNG's ability to perform purely external, unauthenticated discovery using no connectors is fundamental to gaining external threat landscape visibility. This means it can identify all internet-facing assets of an organization without needing internal access, including potentially unknown or forgotten systems and applications. For example, it can discover forgotten staging servers, old marketing websites, or unmanaged cloud instances that are still publicly accessible, acting as hidden entry points for attackers. This unauthenticated approach ensures that the visibility truly reflects what an attacker can see and potentially exploit.
External Assessment: ThreatNG provides various assessment ratings that directly contribute to understanding the external threat landscape:
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: This score is substantiated by analyzing the external attack surface and digital risk intelligence, including Domain Intelligence, to identify potential entry points for attackers in a web application. For instance, ThreatNG can assess if a web application's external configuration makes it susceptible to content injection or session hijacking, which are tactics attackers use.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: ThreatNG evaluates this using external attack surface and digital risk intelligence, incorporating Domain Intelligence, including a comprehensive analysis of the website's subdomains, DNS records, and SSL certificate statuses. An example would be identifying a CNAME record pointing to a deprovisioned cloud service, making the subdomain vulnerable to takeover by an attacker who registers that service.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This rating is derived from Domain Intelligence (which includes DNS Intelligence capabilities like Domain Name Permutations and Web3 Domains and Email Intelligence, which provides email security presence and format prediction) and Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials). ThreatNG can identify "lookalike" domain names that attackers might register to conduct phishing campaigns against an organization's employees or customers, providing early warning for potential brand impersonation.
Brand Damage Susceptibility: This score is derived from attack surface intelligence, digital risk intelligence, ESG Violations, Sentiment and Financials, and Domain Intelligence (Domain Name Permutations and Web3 Domains). ThreatNG can highlight if an organization has numerous similar-looking domains available for registration, which malicious actors could use to damage the brand.
Data Leak Susceptibility: This is derived from external attack surface and digital risk intelligence based on Cloud and SaaS Exposure, Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials), Domain Intelligence (DNS Intelligence capabilities, Email Intelligence), and Sentiment and Financials. ThreatNG can pinpoint exposed cloud storage buckets or misconfigured SaaS instances that are publicly accessible and contain sensitive data, indicating a data leak risk.
Cyber Risk Exposure: This considers parameters from the Domain Intelligence module, including certificates, subdomain headers, vulnerabilities, and sensitive ports, to determine cyber risk exposure. For example, ThreatNG can identify externally accessible sensitive ports like RDP or SSH on servers, which are common targets for attackers trying to gain initial access.
Code Secret Exposure: This factor discovers code repositories and their exposure level, investigating the contents for sensitive data. ThreatNG can find public GitHub repositories belonging to the organization that inadvertently contain API keys, database credentials, or private SSH keys, which attackers actively seek.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: This evaluates cloud services and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. ThreatNG can identify unsanctioned cloud services or open, exposed cloud buckets across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. An example is discovering an exposed S3 bucket containing customer data, directly exposing the organization to a breach.
Mobile App Exposure: ThreatNG evaluates how exposed an organization’s mobile apps are through discovery in marketplaces and for the presence of access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers within their contents. This helps identify whether sensitive information, like API or private keys, is hardcoded and exposed within publicly available mobile applications.
Reporting: ThreatNG offers a variety of reports, including Executive, Technical, Prioritized (High, Medium, Low, and Informational), Security Ratings, Inventory, Ransomware Susceptibility, and U.S. SEC Filings. For External Threat Landscape Visibility, the Inventory reports provide a detailed list of all discovered external assets. In contrast, the Prioritized reports highlight the most critical external risks, allowing security teams to focus on immediate threats from an attacker's perspective. The Knowledgebase embedded throughout the solution provides risk levels, reasoning, recommendations, and reference links, helping organizations understand and mitigate specific external risks.
Continuous Monitoring: ThreatNG continuously monitors all organizations' external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings. This is vital for maintaining External Threat Landscape Visibility because the external attack surface constantly evolves. For example, if a new public-facing server is accidentally provisioned without proper security configurations, ThreatNG's continuous monitoring would detect its presence and assess its vulnerabilities, alerting the security team to a new exposure.
Investigation Modules: ThreatNG provides detailed investigation modules to deep-dive into external exposures:
Domain Intelligence: This module comprehensively overviews an organization's digital presence.
DNS Intelligence: Includes Domain Record Analysis (IP Identification, Vendors and Technology Identification), Domain Name Permutations (Taken and Available), and Web3 Domains (Taken and Available). For instance, it can identify all IP addresses associated with an organization's domains, including those hosted by third-party vendors, or show available domain name permutations that attackers could register for malicious purposes.
Email Intelligence: Provides Security Presence (DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records) and Format Predictions. ThreatNG can reveal if an organization's email authentication records are misconfigured or missing, making it easier for attackers to spoof emails from its domain.
WHOIS Intelligence: Offers WHOIS Analysis and Other Domains Owned. This can uncover additional domains registered by the organization, some of which might be forgotten or mismanaged, thus contributing to the external attack surface.
Subdomain Intelligence: Beyond takeover susceptibility, it includes content identification like Admin Pages, APIs, Development Environments, and exposed Ports (e.g., IoT/OT, Databases, Remote Access Services). ThreatNG can identify an externally exposed administrative interface for a critical system or an open database port, which are direct targets for attackers.
Sensitive Code Exposure: This module discovers public code repositories and uncovers digital risks like access credentials (API keys, access tokens), cloud credentials (AWS keys), security credentials (private keys), and configuration files. An example would be finding a public Git repository containing a developer's AWS access key ID, which an attacker could use to compromise cloud resources.
Search Engine Exploitation: This helps investigate an organization’s susceptibility to exposing sensitive information via search engines. It can identify publicly indexed files containing user data, error logs, or sensitive configuration details that an attacker could find simply by using Google.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: ThreatNG identifies sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services, cloud service impersonations, and open exposed cloud buckets. This module can detect if an organization has an insecure Google Cloud Platform bucket that is publicly readable, exposing sensitive files.
Online Sharing Exposure: This identifies organizational presence within online Code-Sharing Platforms like Pastebin, GitHub Gist, Scribd, and Slideshare. ThreatNG can detect if employees have inadvertently shared sensitive company information or credentials on public code-sharing sites.
Dark Web Presence: This module identifies organizational mentions of related people, places, or things, associated ransomware events, and compromised credentials. ThreatNG can alert if an organization's employee credentials have been found on the dark web, indicating a potential avenue for attackers to gain access.
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache): These continuously updated repositories enrich ThreatNG's visibility by providing critical context about external threats:
Dark Web (DarCache Dark Web) & Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): These can reveal if an organization's sensitive data or employee credentials are being traded or discussed on the dark web, indicating high-risk external exposure.
Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): This includes NVD, EPSS, KEV, and Verified Proof-of-Concept (PoC) Exploits. This is crucial for understanding the real-world exploitability of discovered vulnerabilities. For example, suppose ThreatNG identifies a public-facing web server with a known vulnerability. In that case, DarCache Vulnerability can indicate if that vulnerability has a high EPSS score (likelihood of exploitation) or is part of the KEV catalog (actively exploited in the wild), allowing the organization to prioritize patching efforts.
Synergies with Complementary Solutions:
ThreatNG's purely external perspective provides valuable intelligence that can significantly enhance other cybersecurity solutions:
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Systems: ThreatNG's continuous monitoring and risk assessment findings, such as newly discovered external assets or critical vulnerabilities, can be fed into a SIEM. This allows security teams to correlate external threat intelligence with internal logs and alerts, providing a more comprehensive view of potential attacks targeting the organization's external footprint. For example, if ThreatNG identifies a newly exposed database on a specific IP, the SIEM can look for unusual access attempts to that IP.
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): ThreatNG's DarCache repositories, especially those on vulnerabilities (NVD, EPSS, KEV, PoC Exploits), compromised credentials, and ransomware groups, can enrich a TIP. This ensures that the TIP has the most up-to-date and contextually relevant external threat data, which can then be disseminated to other security controls (e.g., firewalls, endpoint detection and response) to block known threats identified by ThreatNG proactively. For instance, if DarCache Ransomware identifies a new ransomware group targeting specific technologies, a TIP can use this information to update relevant security policies.
Vulnerability Management Platforms: ThreatNG's detailed External Assessment and Vulnerabilities DarCache can directly enhance a vulnerability management platform. By providing an external, attacker-centric view of vulnerabilities, ThreatNG helps these platforms prioritize patching efforts based on actual external exposure and exploitability likelihood (e.g., using EPSS and KEV data) rather than just internal scans. For example, suppose ThreatNG identifies a critical vulnerability on an externally facing web server that is also known to be actively exploited (from KEV). In that case, the vulnerability management platform can immediately flag it as a top priority.
Digital Risk Protection (DRP) Platforms: While ThreatNG is a DRP solution itself, its specialized focus on external attack surface intelligence, particularly around domain name permutations and mobile app exposure, can provide a deeper layer of insight for broader DRP platforms that might cover a wider range of digital risks, including social media or physical threats. ThreatNG's ability to spot lookalike domains provides immediate value for brand protection efforts.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) Solutions: ThreatNG's Cloud and SaaS Exposure module offers an external view of cloud misconfigurations and exposed buckets. This can complement a CSPM solution focusing on internal cloud configurations and compliance. Together, they provide a full spectrum of cloud security posture – from what's exposed externally (ThreatNG) to how internal configurations are managed (CSPM). For instance, ThreatNG might find an open S3 bucket that an internal CSPM scan might miss if not correctly configured to be part of the monitored scope.
