As modern businesses become more complex, their attack surfaces - the potential avenues of entry for a hacker - are continually increasing. Due to this, cybercrime is reaching all-time highs.

Yet, with the development of hacking also comes the improvement of defense systems. Attack surface management tools now allow for automatic monitoring and defense of attack surfaces. In this article, we'll be exploring how attack surface management works and educating on the four most prominent avenues that hackers use to gain access to businesses. 

Let's get right into it.

How Does Attack Surface Management Work?

Attack surface management can be done either manually or automatically. If a security expert were to manage their company's attack surface manually, they would need to go through every single attached application, portal, and site on the network. The first step of doing this would be to create an extensive list of potential surfaces on the attack surface.

From there, the security expert can go through them, narrowing them down one by one in order to cover all of their bases. They would test each of the applications they find, using a range of techniques from the MITRE Attack Framework, in order to see how strong their defenses are. Their main job here is to see if there are any vulnerabilities in the system.

Other forms of manually covering the attack surface would be through penetration testing or running red and blue tests.

However, while managing your attack surface manually is definitely possible, very few people opt to do this. This hesitation is generated because of two ideas, the first being that it's almost impossible to manually find every single part of an attack surface. Due to the increasing complexity of the internet and all the potential services that are attached to a business, the full surface of a given company can be incredibly expansive.

This considered, many people will miss out on elements of their attack surface when trying to manage it manually. Additionally, the sheer amount of possible entry pathways that a hacker could attempt to gain access means that the job of defending even one access port manually is a huge task. When browsing through the MITRE Attack Framework, one only needs to cast their eye to the number of different methods that are listed within each technique to realize the gargantuan task that is defending an attack surface manually.

That's why the majority of security experts will use automated attack surface management. Instead of manually moving through all the open ports connected to the central system, an attack surface management security system will automatically scan. This continual process of scanning for leaked credentials, shadow IT, or high-risk vulnerabilities allows the system to flag any potential weak points. 

The system will then either mitigate the threat manually or alert a security expert of the threat and provide a detailed set of instructions for combatting it. As the system is automatic, it will continuously be running in the background, providing a 24/7 security solution that defends your company's attack surface. 

What Are the Most Common Attack Vectors that Target Attack Surfaces?

While there is a huge range of individual tactics that a hacker can use to penetrate a system, the majority of the time, they will use five avenues to gain access to your systems. An automatic attack surface management system will work through these continuously, providing an in-depth coverage and prevention scheme.

Typically, an attacker will use one of these five strategies to gain access to your systems illegally:

• Malware

• Stolen Passwords

• Unpatched Software

• Phishing 

Let's break these down further.

Malware

Malware is the injection of malicious software onto a device. This could be ransomware that takes control of the system and demands money to free the device; trojans, which are types of malware that are disguised as helpful programs; even just typical viruses that get onto a system. 

Malware often leads to hackers taking control of a device, giving them the ability to search through company files and documents to find critical information. They can also damage systems and cause chaos within the business from this position. 

Stolen Passwords

One of the most common attack vectors that hackers can use to gain access through an attack surface is by using compromised passwords. A compromised password can stem from two main sources. The first of these is employees using weak passwords or reusing passwords across many accounts. These passwords are much easier to guess, with a password algorithm running through millions of passwords each minute to crack them.

Alternatively, an employee's password could be part of a data breach that releases all the passwords on a system to the public. Especially if they use the same password on many accounts, this can lead to hackers being able to find their password online and then enter it into the system to gain access.

No matter how they find and use the password, once into the system, they'll have access to all the documents that your business wants to keep private. Be sure to teach your employees about strong passwords, changing passwords frequently, and alternating passwords for different systems. 

An automatic attack surface management system will scan the internet for data breaches, altering you if any of your employees' passwords show up online in a breach.

Unpatched Software

Whether it's a port that was left open or a vulnerability in an operating system, unpatched software leaves your business open for access. Considering the complexity of the various servers, services, and operating systems that businesses use, it's likely that there are hidden vulnerabilities that are undiscovered by your security teams.

An attack surface management software will find these unpatched areas, alerting the security team to their presence before a hacker can use them to gain illegal access into your business. Considering this whole process is about finding unknown areas, automatic software is much more efficient. 

Many security professionals won't know where to begin when looking for something hidden, making the automatic searching process much more effective when create a strong defense system. 

Phishing 

One of the most common ways of gaining access to confidential information is through phishing attacks. These are where an individual will receive an email, text, or other digital communication that looks as if it comes from a reputable source. Many false emails will closely mirror the structure of a company email, asking for the reader to follow a link in the text of the email. Once they do so, they'll be navigated to a false page that closely resembles that of the business they think has just contacted them.

After they're on this page, they'll enter their passwords to log into their accounts, as they believe they are on the real homepage. Often, the user is then redirected to the real page, with their information being sent directly to the scammer that created the false page. 

Phishing is incredibly common, with Americans falling for this scam every single day. In fact, 86% of US organizations have had a phishing attack where at least one of their employees clicked a fake link and gave away critical information to a scammer. While some industries, like retail, are hit harder than others with this form of penetration, it's one to train your employees to be aware of. 

Final Thoughts 

While educating your team on the importance of digital security, like password etiquette, is a great avenue for improving your defenses, nothing beats an automatic attack surface management tool. Outclassing manual defenses completely, every business should turn to an automatic method of protecting their attack surface.

These surface management tools will cover the four most common entry avenues, as well as all the other potential methods that a hacker will use to gain access to a business. When investing in attack surface management, you're investing in a comprehensive defense system that covers your whole online presence - whether you know about it or not.