GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance)
Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) in cybersecurity refers to the integrated framework of processes, policies, and technologies that an organization uses to manage its overall cybersecurity posture, align security efforts with business objectives, identify and mitigate cyber risks, and ensure adherence to relevant laws, regulations, and internal policies.
As a cybersecurity use case, GRC focuses on:
Governance: Establishing and maintaining an effective cybersecurity strategy, policies, and organizational structures. This involves defining roles and responsibilities, setting security objectives, and ensuring security is integrated into business processes and decision-making. Key aspects include security policy management, asset management, security awareness training oversight, and defining the security architecture.
Risk Management: Proactively identifying, assessing, mitigating, and monitoring cybersecurity risks. This involves understanding potential threats and vulnerabilities, evaluating the likelihood and impact of security incidents, and implementing controls to reduce risk to an acceptable level. This includes risk assessment, risk treatment (mitigation), risk monitoring, and incident management.
Compliance: Ensuring that the organization adheres to all applicable internal policies, industry standards, and external regulations related to cybersecurity. This involves demonstrating adherence through audits, reporting, and documentation. Examples of compliance requirements include GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, ISO 27001, NIST CSF, and various national or industry-specific data protection laws.
The ultimate goal of GRC in cybersecurity is to establish a robust and resilient security program that safeguards information assets, minimizes business disruptions, prevents legal and reputational damage, and fosters stakeholder trust, all while aligning with the organization's strategic objectives.
How ThreatNG Helps with GRC in Detail
ThreatNG, as an external attack surface management, digital risk protection, and security ratings solution, provides a unique and powerful external perspective that directly feeds into and significantly strengthens an organization's GRC capabilities. It acts as an early warning system and continuous validation tool for GRC programs by identifying external exposures, digital risks, and compliance gaps that traditional internal audits might miss.
1. External Discovery: The Foundation for External GRC
ThreatNG's external, unauthenticated discovery capability, requiring no connectors, is foundational for external GRC. Understanding the attack surface from an adversary's perspective is crucial for a GRC assessment. ThreatNG automatically discovers an organization's digital footprint, including domains, subdomains, IP addresses, cloud assets, mobile apps, and exposed code repositories.
GRC Impact: This ensures that the GRC program is aware of all internet-facing assets, including those that may have been overlooked or used in shadow IT, which might otherwise bypass internal inventory and risk assessments. For example, suppose ThreatNG discovers an old, unmanaged subdomain hosting an outdated application. In that case, it immediately highlights a governance gap (lack of asset control) and a significant risk (potential for exploitation), which a GRC team must address for compliance.
2. External Assessment: Granular GRC Insights
ThreatNG's detailed external assessments directly inform GRC risk and compliance management by pinpointing specific vulnerabilities and digital risks:
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility:
How ThreatNG Helps: ThreatNG uses external attack surface and domain intelligence to analyze web applications from the outside, identifying weaknesses that could lead to hijacking.
GRC Example: ThreatNG might identify an exposed administrative interface of a web application with weak authentication. This directly impacts compliance with secure coding standards (e.g., OWASP Top 10 A2 for broken authentication) and represents a significant data confidentiality and integrity risk, requiring the GRC team to mandate immediate remediation.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility:
How ThreatNG Helps: ThreatNG scrutinizes DNS records and subdomain configurations to detect potential takeover vulnerabilities.
GRC Example: ThreatNG discovers an orphaned DNS record pointing to a de-provisioned cloud service, making the subdomain susceptible to takeover. The GRC team would identify this as a critical risk (reputational damage, phishing vector) and a governance failure (poor asset de-provisioning process), requiring policy updates and immediate DNS record cleanup for compliance.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility:
How ThreatNG Helps: Derived from sentiment, financials, dark web presence (compromised credentials), and comprehensive email intelligence (DMARC, SPF, DKIM, harvested emails).
GRC Example: ThreatNG flags many harvested organizational emails on the dark web, combined with weak DMARC policies. This directly impacts compliance with email security best practices and signals a high risk of successful phishing campaigns, which could lead to data breaches and regulatory non-compliance. The GRC team would then enforce stronger DMARC policies and user awareness training.
How ThreatNG Helps: It leverages the external attack surface, digital risk intelligence, ESG violations, and sentiment analysis (lawsuits, negative news).
GRC Example: ThreatNG detects multiple instances of brand impersonation on newly registered domain permutations. This GRC concern for brand protection and reputation management requires legal action or domain acquisition to mitigate risk.
How ThreatNG Helps: Identifies exposed cloud storage buckets, compromised credentials on the dark web, and sensitive data in public code repositories.
GRC Example: ThreatNG reveals an open AWS S3 bucket containing sensitive customer data. This is a severe compliance violation and a significant data breach risk, demanding immediate GRC intervention to secure the bucket and report the incident if necessary.
How ThreatNG Helps: Considers exposed sensitive ports, private IPs, known vulnerabilities, code secrets, and cloud/SaaS exposure.
GRC Example: ThreatNG identifies a public-facing database with an open sensitive port and a critical CVE. This directly maps to a high-severity risk in the GRC framework, requiring an immediate patch and firewall rule implementation to reduce the attack surface and maintain compliance with vulnerability management policies.
How ThreatNG Helps: Rates organizations based on discovered environmental, social, and governance violations from an external perspective.
GRC Example: ThreatNG identifies publicly available legal filings or negative news (e.g., a past environmental violation). This directly flags an ESG compliance and reputational risk that the GRC team must monitor and potentially address in their public disclosures.
Supply Chain & Third Party Exposure:
How ThreatNG Helps: It enumerates vendor technologies from DNS, subdomains, the technology stack, and cloud/SaaS exposure.
GRC Example: ThreatNG discovers that the organization's critical third-party vendor has a publicly exposed, unpatched server. This immediately flags a third-party risk within the GRC framework, prompting the organization to reassess the vendor's security posture and potentially re-evaluate the partnership based on compliance requirements.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility:
How ThreatNG Helps: Assesses susceptibility based on exposed sensitive ports, private IPs, known vulnerabilities, compromised credentials, and ransomware gang activity.
GRC Example: ThreatNG detects the organization has many compromised credentials on the dark web and identifies recent ransomware gang activity targeting similar organizations. This high susceptibility directly informs the GRC team's incident response planning and mandates increased investment in preventative controls, reflecting risk management best practices.
How ThreatNG Helps: Discovers mobile apps in marketplaces and analyzes them for exposed credentials or platform identifiers.
GRC Example: ThreatNG identifies an organization's mobile app in a public marketplace that contains hardcoded API keys. This is a severe security flaw and a non-compliance issue with secure application development policies, requiring the GRC team to enforce code reviews and secure coding practices.
How ThreatNG Helps: Validates the presence and effectiveness of security measures like WAFs or MFA from an external attacker's perspective.
GRC Example: ThreatNG confirms that a Web Application Firewall (WAF) effectively mitigates common web attack vectors for a critical application. This provides positive assurance for GRC reporting, demonstrating the effectiveness of implemented controls and supporting compliance with application security requirements.
3. Reporting: Streamlining GRC Communication and Prioritization
ThreatNG's diverse reporting capabilities are essential for GRC teams:
Executive, Technical, Prioritized (High, Medium, Low, Informational): These reports cater to different GRC stakeholders. Executive summaries inform leadership on overall risk posture, while technical reports provide actionable details for remediation teams.
Security Ratings, Inventory, Ransomware Susceptibility: These reports provide clear metrics and specific risk insights for GRC.
External GRC Assessment Mappings (e.g., PCI DSS): This feature is a game-changer for GRC. ThreatNG automatically maps its findings to specific controls within frameworks, such as PCI DSS.
GRC Example: If ThreatNG identifies a publicly exposed database (PCI DSS Requirement 1.2.1 for firewalls) or an unpatched vulnerability on a cardholder data environment (PCI DSS Requirement 6.2 for security patches), the report directly flags these as PCI DSS non-compliance issues. This significantly reduces manual effort in mapping risks to compliance requirements, accelerating the GRC assessment and audit preparation.
4. Continuous Monitoring: Proactive GRC
ThreatNG continuously monitors the external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings.
GRC Impact: This capability transitions GRC from a reactive, periodic audit approach to a proactive, continuous risk management strategy. ThreatNG immediately detects changes and flags new exposures or compliance deviations as organizations deploy new assets or configurations.
GRC Example: A development team inadvertently exposes a testing environment to the internet. ThreatNG's continuous monitoring immediately detects this new asset and any associated vulnerabilities, allowing the GRC team to respond swiftly before it becomes a significant incident or audit finding, thus preventing compliance breaches.
5. Investigation Modules: Deep Diving for GRC Root Causes
ThreatNG's detailed investigation modules provide the forensic-level detail needed by GRC teams to understand the root cause of issues and implement adequate controls:
GRC Example: A GRC team reviewing a potential phishing susceptibility flag uses Domain Intelligence's DNS and Email Intelligence. They discover misconfigured SPF records and multiple "sister" domains (domain permutations) registered by malicious actors. This detailed insight allows the GRC team to mandate immediate DNS record correction and initiate legal action against the malicious domains, strengthening governance over digital brand assets.
GRC Example: A GRC audit requires verification that internal systems are not directly exposed to external threats. IP Intelligence helps confirm that private IP ranges are not inadvertently exposed to the internet, thus ensuring compliance with network segmentation policies.
GRC Example: GRC compliance mandates that all public-facing services utilize valid TLS certificates. ThreatNG's Certificate Intelligence identifies expired or misconfigured certificates, allowing the GRC team to ensure timely renewal and adherence to cryptographic standards.
Social Media:
GRC Example: GRC teams monitor brand reputation and potential data leaks. ThreatNG identifies an internal document accidentally shared on a public social media platform, enabling the GRC team to initiate immediate takedown procedures and review social media policies.
GRC Example: ThreatNG's Code Repository Exposure module reveals hardcoded API keys in a public GitHub repository. This critical GRC finding violates secure development policies and could lead to unauthorized access. The GRC team would then enforce secret management policies and thoroughly review all public code.
GRC Example: A GRC review for application security identifies a mobile app with exposed security credentials. The GRC team then mandates a security audit of the mobile app and enforces stricter secure development lifecycle (SDLC) processes.
GRC Example: ThreatNG discovers sensitive internal documents indexed by search engines. The GRC team uses this to identify misconfigured web server settings or
robots.txtfiles, ensuring compliance with data exposure prevention policies.
GRC Example: ThreatNG discovers an unsanctioned SaaS application being used, or an open S3 bucket on a public cloud provider. This is a direct GRC concern related to shadow IT and data protection, prompting the GRC team to enforce cloud governance policies and data access controls.
GRC Example: GRC teams need to prevent sensitive information leakage. ThreatNG identifies confidential internal meeting notes posted on a public pastebin site, allowing the GRC team to implement data loss prevention (DLP) measures and reinforce information handling policies.
GRC Example: ThreatNG identifies a recent SEC Form 8-K filing mentioning a significant cyber incident. This immediately alerts the GRC team to review their incident response procedures and public disclosure policies, ensuring they align with regulatory requirements.
GRC Example: ThreatNG uncovers an old website version in an archive containing sensitive PII that was later removed from the live site. The GRC team would ensure that all archived data adheres to data retention and privacy policies.
GRC Example: ThreatNG identifies many compromised employee credentials or mentions of the organization by ransomware gangs on the dark web. This information is critical for the GRC team's risk assessment, triggering an immediate review of internal security controls and potentially mandating multi-factor authentication across the organization to comply with security best practices.
GRC Example: ThreatNG identifies numerous outdated or vulnerable technologies across the external attack surface. The GRC team can then use this information to prioritize technology upgrades and ensure compliance with software lifecycle management policies.
6. Intelligence Repositories (DarCache): Contextualizing GRC Risks
ThreatNG's DarCache provides critical, real-time threat intelligence that enriches GRC risk assessments:
Dark Web, Compromised Credentials, Ransomware Groups:
GRC Example: If ThreatNG's DarCache Dark Web and DarCache Ransomware indicate a surge in activity by a ransomware group known to exploit a specific vulnerability the organization has (as identified by ThreatNG's assessments), the GRC team can immediately escalate the risk rating of that vulnerability and prioritize its remediation, ensuring proactive risk management in line with regulatory expectations.
Vulnerabilities (NVD, EPSS, KEV, Verified PoC Exploits):
GRC Example: ThreatNG's DarCache KEV identifies that a critical vulnerability on a public-facing server (detected by ThreatNG's External Assessment) is actively exploited in the wild. The GRC team can use this intelligence to justify immediate emergency patching and resource allocation, demonstrating a strong risk response capability for audit purposes. ThreatNG's DarCache EPSS, which shows a high probability of exploitation for a specific CVE, would prompt the GRC team to prioritize patching over a CVE with a similar CVSS score but a lower EPSS, aligning risk management with real-world threat intelligence.
ESG Violations (DarCache ESG):
GRC Example: GRC teams responsible for corporate social responsibility can use DarCache ESG to monitor the organization's or its key third parties' past ESG-related non-compliance incidents, informing their governance frameworks and risk assessments.
SEC Form 8-Ks (DarCache 8-K):
GRC Example: For public companies, GRC teams can use DarCache 8-K to stay informed about cybersecurity-related disclosures by similar organizations, thereby informing their own risk assessments and disclosure practices in compliance with SEC regulations.
Synergies with Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's external focus creates powerful synergies with other internal-facing cybersecurity and GRC tools:
Complementary Solutions: Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Systems
Synergy Example: ThreatNG identifies an exposed critical service on the internet. This intelligence is fed into the SIEM. Subsequently, suppose the SIEM detects brute-force login attempts or unusual traffic patterns directed at that exposed service. In that case, combining external exposure (from ThreatNG) and internal activity (from SIEM) enables a higher-fidelity alert and a faster, more informed incident response. The GRC team benefits from this correlation, as it provides more substantial evidence of continuous monitoring and effective incident detection.
Complementary Solutions: Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Platforms
Synergy Example: ThreatNG's detailed External GRC Assessment Mappings for frameworks can be directly imported into a dedicated GRC platform. For instance, if ThreatNG identifies a non-compliant finding (e.g., an open sensitive port violating a PCI DSS requirement), this finding automatically populates the risk register within the GRC platform, linking it to the specific control. This streamlines audit preparation, risk tracking, and compliance reporting, centralizing all GRC-related data.
Complementary Solutions: Vulnerability Management (VM) Solutions
Synergy Example: ThreatNG's external vulnerability findings (enriched with NVD, EPSS, and KEV data from DarCache) can be prioritized and fed into an internal VM solution. If ThreatNG flags a high-severity, actively exploited (KEV) vulnerability on a public-facing web server, the VM solution can prioritize its internal scanning and patching activities on that specific asset, ensuring that the most critical external risks are addressed first.
Complementary Solutions: Identity and Access Management (IAM) Systems
Synergy Example: When ThreatNG's Dark Web Presence module identifies compromised credentials associated with the organization, this information can be pushed to an IAM system. The IAM system can then automatically trigger mandatory password resets for the affected accounts or enforce multi-factor authentication, directly mitigating the risk of account takeover and strengthening access controls, which are core GRC components.
Complementary Solutions: Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Platforms
Synergy Example: This alert can initiate an automated playbook in a SOAR platform if ThreatNG detects a critical data leak (e.g., sensitive configuration files exposed on a public online sharing platform). The SOAR platform could automatically alert the responsible team, create a remediation ticket, notify legal and GRC stakeholders, and potentially initiate a takedown request, automating much of the incident response process and ensuring prompt compliance actions.
ThreatNG is a vital external cybersecurity intelligence arm for GRC, providing continuous, objective insights into an organization's exposed risks and compliance posture. By detailing and continuously monitoring the external attack surface, ThreatNG enables GRC teams to proactively identify, assess, manage, and report on cybersecurity risks and compliance gaps, complementing internal GRC efforts and enhancing the organization's overall security resilience.
