7 Ways Historical Data Improves External Attack Surface Management (EASM)
External attack surface management (EASM) has become a critical practice for organizations aiming to identify, assess, and mitigate vulnerabilities in their digital footprint. As organizations adopt more complex IT infrastructures and leverage cloud computing and remote work environments, their external attack surface—the sum of all potential entry points for attackers—continues to grow. While continuous monitoring and vulnerability findings are cornerstones of effective EASM, historical data plays an equally vital role in understanding and managing risks.
The Growing Complexity of External Attack Surfaces
Organizations today face a complex web of challenges in securing their internet-facing assets. From the proliferation of shadow IT and forgotten subdomains to the risks posed by acquired organizations and abandoned DevOps sites, the attack surface is often sprawling and difficult to define.
While traditional security measures focus primarily on reacting to immediate threats, including newly identified vulnerabilities or active exploits, this reactive approach often overlooks the importance of historical context. By analyzing patterns, trends, and long-standing weaknesses over time, organizations can gain crucial insights that may not be evident from a single snapshot in time. This proactive, contextual approach is essential for identifying and addressing deeper, systemic security vulnerabilities.
EASM Historical Data: A Treasure Trove of Insights
Historical data refers to the collection of records that document the state of an organization’s external attack surface over time. This can include data such as:
- Asset Inventory: Historical records of IP addresses, domains, risky services, expired certificates, shadow IT, and other digital assets.
- Vulnerability Findings: A comprehensive history of discovered and remediated vulnerabilities, including details on Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) scores, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) status, Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS) scores, and expired security certificates.
- Threat Intelligence: Information about past threat actors, attack vectors, and breach attempts.
- Incident Response: Records of past security incidents and how they were addressed.
Benefits of Historical Data in EASM
Analyzing historical data enables security teams to better anticipate and prepare for future events beyond their perimeter. This access to historical information is an invaluable asset to any security team’s toolkit. Benefits of Historical Data in EASM include:
1. Trend Analysis
Analyzing historical data empowers organizations to track the evolution of their attack surface over time. By studying trends, security teams can identify recurring vulnerabilities that point to systemic issues, understand the lifecycle and evolution of specific threats, and forecast future risks based on patterns like seasonal spikes in phishing attempts or vulnerability exploitation. For instance, if a particular subdomain is frequently targeted, the organization can prioritize reinforcing defenses around similar assets.
Examining how the attack surface has changed helps pinpoint growth areas needing immediate attention, such as new cloud services and exposed APIs. Tracking the introduction of new risks during expansions, migrations, or acquisitions allows security teams to prioritize efforts based on trends like increases in shadow IT. This enables a proactive, data-driven approach to managing the organization's attack surface.
2. Deeper Asset Visibility
Historical data can reveal assets that were once active but have since been forgotten or decommissioned without proper security measures. These "zombie" assets, such as old subdomains or unused APIs, often become easy targets for attackers. By consulting historical records, organizations can ensure no asset is left unprotected.
3. Enhanced Threat Detection
Comparing historical logs with current data can highlight unusual activities, such as new open ports, changes in DNS records, and unauthorized systems or applications. Such anomalies often indicate potential breaches or policy violations.
4. Contextualize Vulnerabilities
Every new vulnerability or attack vector exists within a larger context. Historical data helps organizations contextualize these threats by revealing how similar issues were handled previously. This can inform critical decisions about patching priorities, resource allocation, and incident response strategies. For example, if a newly discovered vulnerability affects an asset that was exploited before, it may warrant immediate remediation.
5. Improve Risk Assessments
By analyzing historical threat data to identify the most damaging risks, scoring models can evaluate and prioritize specific threats more accurately. Combining historical information with current risk assessments enhances the reliability of these evaluations. Risks can be ranked based on how frequently they occur and the severity of their impacts. With a clearer understanding of high-priority risks, organizations can allocate resources more effectively to mitigate critical threats. This data-driven method fosters a deeper understanding of risk and promotes a proactive rather than reactive approach to risk management, empowering organizations to better safeguard their assets and interests.
6. Improve Incident Response
When a security incident occurs, historical data can serve as a forensic tool to trace the origin and progression of the attack. By reviewing logs, vulnerability histories, and past incidents, security teams can pinpoint the root cause of the breach, identify whether similar attacks have occurred before, and develop more effective mitigation strategies to prevent recurrence.
7. Demonstrate Compliance and Due Diligence
Maintaining historical records of an organization's data protection efforts is crucial. These records demonstrate compliance with relevant laws and industry standards, document the organization's actions to secure its attack surface, remediate vulnerabilities, and respond to incidents. Such detailed records can be invaluable during audits or legal proceedings, and may also qualify the organization for cyber insurance coverage in the event of a breach.
Gain Historical Perspective with Zerofox EASM
For over a decade, ZeroFox has leveraged world-class intelligence to detect, disrupt, and remediate external threats that lie beyond the corporate perimeter. By integrating External Attack Surface Management (EASM) into the ZeroFox platform, organizations gain continuous digital visibility from an attacker's perspective. EASM provides enhanced asset identification, contextualized vulnerability intelligence, and prioritized remediation recommendation - enabling organizations to mitigate threats across the digital attack surface and improve mean time to detection and response.
Each digital asset in the ZeroFox Asset Inventory includes a "History" section that displays a reverse chronology of events related to that host's activity. Additionally, users can compare different points in a host's event history, which helps identify if and how the host has changed over time. This comparative view is valuable for understanding the evolution of a potentially problematic host.
Zerofox EASM continuously monitors the external attack surface, immediately notifying the organization of any changes, newly discovered assets, or emerging exposures. By continuously assessing the environment, EASM rapidly identifies modifications to inventory assets enabling the organization to swiftly evaluate and address those changes as soon as they are detected.
Overall, the historical data and timeline functionality within the ZeroFox EASM solution gives security teams important context and visibility into host behavior and changes - helping them quickly mitigate potential threats across the digital attack surface.
Leverage Historical Data for Your Organization
Historical EASM data packs a powerful punch. By tapping into historical data, organizations can more easily identify patterns, track attacker infrastructure, build comprehensive timelines, enhance contextual awareness, and facilitate threat attribution. Leveraging this historical viewpoint empowers organizations to plan more effectively for the future, gaining the insights they need to stay one step ahead of adversaries and strengthen their defenses.
Contact ZeroFox today to discover how to prioritize and address the most critical vulnerabilities within your external attack surface.
Kelly Kuebelbeck
Senior Product Marketing
Kelly Kuebelbeck is a dedicated threat researcher with a strong passion for understanding and combating cybercrime. She has over 15 years of marketing experience in cybersecurity, IoT risk management, and healthcare technology management. As a senior product marketer at Zerofox, Kelly oversees EASM (Enterprise Attack Surface Management) breach prevention technologies, develops product content, and supports product launches. Before joining Zerofox, she held marketing leadership positions at Asimily, Smarten Spaces, and Accruent.