Attack Surface Management vs Vulnerability Management: Key Differences Explained
In our digitized world where waves of cyberattacks can hit at any moment, companies try to outrun the constant activity of hackers—they invest in cyber attack surface management.
The more advanced the technology gets, the more advanced the threats become. And that’s where ASM and VM cybersecurity strategies come up. Businesses need both, but what is the difference, and why does it matter? Let’s explore their roles and why both matter when it comes to a strong defense.
What is Attack Surface Management?
As you have already guessed, ASM stands for attack surface management. It’s all about monitoring every asset that your organization has as a potential point of entrance: servers, websites, cloud services, and devices used by your team without explicit knowledge of the IT department. In other words, it’s all about knowing all the touchpoints that hackers could use to hijack your system. It’s been in high demand for a while.
Cyber ASM by pro teams like Immuniweb is a continuous and proactive practice. Its task is to monitor the external and internal surfaces of your network to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks. Such tools look for stuff that only professionals with an online cyber security Master’s consider and are aware of.
Those can be systems that are outdated and don’t have the latest updates. Or it could be a cloud service somebody over at marketing signed up for without telling IT. Basically, that could pose a potential risk to the integrity of your infrastructure.
Various key elements of ASM include:
- External asset discovery. Discover all the online assets associated with your business.
- Shadow IT detection. Detect any unauthorized usage of technology within your organization.
- Attack surface mapping. Map out the entire swath of your network to uncover and deal with the weak points.
- Continuous monitoring. Stay on top of any emerging threats.
ASM is the view of your digital world in 360 degrees. It helps a business to take a corrective measure before the hackers find their way through.
What is Vulnerability Management?
Now, let’s discuss vulnerability management—or VM for short. If ASM is concerned about what’s out there, VM is concerned about what’s inside. It’s about finding the known vulnerabilities in your systems to assess and patch them.
The concept of VM is built on a simple but very profound assumption: no system is perfect. Technology only keeps evolving, which also means new vulnerabilities come to light.
That’s where VM steps in. Such tools scan your entire digital space for any weak spots: outdated software, misconfigured systems, and unpatched bugs that cybercriminals could exploit.
The major components of VM include:
- Vulnerability scanning. Find the security loopholes in your systems.
- Risk prioritization. Resources should be spent on mitigating the most critical vulnerabilities first, so the task here is to detect which ones are those.
- Patch management. Install updates or fixes that mitigate any security gaps.
- Reporting. Tracking bugs and patches that could fix them.
VM will automatically detect any latest vulnerabilities so that your systems are as secure as possible. All you have to do is manage those risks so that they cannot be used against you.
Key differences between ASM and VM
Now that we are clear on the basics, let’s break down the key differences between ASM and VM done by teams like Immuniweb. Both are crucial and used widely, but they focus on different aspects of your security.
1. Scope and Focus
ASM takes on the big picture of all the attack vectors that may potentially happen. It’s supposed to give you a look into where the potential access points are, so you can manage those before the attack strikes.
VM, on the other hand, is about known vulnerabilities. It’s all about looking out for bugs in the current systems and just patching them up.
2. Timing and Approach
ASM is a continuous regular process. Here, you are always on the lookout for new risks. In this case, you don’t wait until a vulnerability shows up. Rather, you try to figure out any weak spots that in the future can potentially become a liability.
VM operates on more of a scheduled basis. It’s about periodically scanning the systems for known problems and keeping them updated.
3. Proactive vs. Reactive
ASM is all about being proactive. It reduces the attack surface area even before an attacker gets a real chance to exploit it. VM is a more reactive approach, basically. The problems are taken into consideration once you have identified them, so you can path and fix everything retrospectively.
4. Asset coverage
ASM is holistic. It handles all assets, internal and external, managed, and unmanaged. VM primarily addresses the known systems and software—those that are part of the infrastructure of your organization.
How ASM and VM Improve the Overall Strategy
The good news is that ASM and VM don’t compete against each other. In reality, they work quite well together. ASM monitors everything that can go wrong and VM steps in to fix known problems. They’re two halves of one complete security strategy.
For instance, ASM may detect that a user has plugged a new device into the network. That device can then automatically be scanned by VM for any software vulnerabilities that need patching. Together, they cover all the ground. To secure your business.
Here’s an example. Imagine that a company has recently relocated its files to a new cloud space. We use ASM then to discover that an enterprise cloud server—set up by one of its team members several months ago—can be accessed by the public. Luckily, with their ASM strategy, they found the hole in their defenses before an attacker could.
Then VM scans the server for vulnerabilities. It finds outdated software waiting for its patch. So as you can see, without those two tools working together, that server could have quickly become a huge security risk.
Conclusions
Both cyberattacks surface management (ASM) and vulnerability management (VM) are about saving your business from cyber threats.
ASM shows you all of the potential risks you never knew existed. VM makes your system foolproof by patching up the gaps you already know of. Using both in your cybersecurity strategy, you will be able to reduce your general attack surface and make sure that the cracks in the system are taken care of in time.
