Threat exposure management (TEM) is a proactive approach to identifying, prioritizing, and mitigating cyber risks in your organization. TEM helps you to reduce the attack surface, improve the security posture, and respond faster to incidents. In this blog post, we will share some tips and best practices on how to implement TEM for your business fast.
What is TEM and why do you need it?
TEM is a process of continuously monitoring and assessing the exposure of your assets, data, and users to cyber threats. TEM helps you to answer questions like:
- What are the most critical assets and data in your organization?
- Where are they located and how are they protected?
- Who has access to them and what are they doing with them?
- What are the current vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that could be exploited by attackers?
- What are the potential impacts and consequences of a breach?
By answering these questions, you can gain a comprehensive and accurate view of your cyber risk landscape and prioritize the most urgent actions to reduce it. TEM also enables you to measure the effectiveness of your security controls and policies, and track the progress of your remediation efforts.
How to implement TEM?
Implementing TEM for your business fast requires a combination of people, processes, and technology. Here are some steps you can follow to get started:
1. Define your scope and objectives
Decide what assets, data, and users you want to include in your TEM program, and what are the goals and metrics you want to achieve. For example, you may want to focus on your most critical or sensitive assets first, or aim to reduce the number of high-risk vulnerabilities by a certain percentage.
2. Choose a TEM solution
A TEM solution is a software tool that automates and simplifies the process of collecting, analyzing, and reporting on your threat exposure data. A TEM solution should provide features such as:
- Asset discovery and inventory: The ability to discover and map all the assets in your environment, including devices, applications, cloud services, containers, etc.
- Vulnerability scanning and assessment: The ability to scan and identify vulnerabilities and misconfigurations across your assets, using both active and passive methods.
- Threat intelligence integration: The ability to correlate your exposure data with external sources of threat intelligence, such as indicators of compromise (IOCs), threat actors, attack techniques, etc.
- Risk scoring and prioritization: The ability to assign a risk score to each asset and vulnerability based on factors such as severity, exploitability, impact, etc., and prioritize them according to their importance.
- Remediation workflow and orchestration: The ability to create and assign remediation tasks to the responsible teams or individuals, and automate the execution of remediation actions using integrations with other tools.
- Reporting and dashboarding: The ability to generate and customize reports and dashboards that show the status and trends of your threat exposure, as well as the performance and compliance of your TEM program.
3. Deploy and configure your TEM solution
Depending on the type of TEM solution you choose, you may need to install agents or sensors on your assets, or use APIs or connectors to integrate with other sources of data. You may also need to configure settings such as scan schedules, scan policies, risk models, alert rules, etc.
4. Run scans and collect data
Once your TEM solution is deployed and configured, you can start running scans on your assets and collecting data on their exposure. You can run scans on demand or on a regular basis, depending on your needs and preferences.
5. Analyze and act on the results
After each scan, you can review the results in your TEM solution’s interface or reports. You can filter, sort, search, or drill down into the data to get more insights into your exposure. You can also compare the results with previous scans or benchmarks to see how your exposure has changed over time. Based on the results, you can decide what actions you need to take to reduce your exposure, such as patching vulnerabilities, updating configurations, revoking access rights, etc. You can also use your TEM solution’s remediation workflow and orchestration features to automate or streamline these actions.
6. Monitor and improve your TEM program
As you implement TEM for your business fast, you should also monitor and measure its effectiveness and impact. You can use your TEM solution’s reporting and dashboarding features to track key metrics such as:
- Exposure score. A measure of the overall level of risk in your environment based on your exposure data.
- Exposure reduction rate. A measure of how much you have reduced your exposure over time by implementing remediation actions.
- Exposure coverage rate. A measure of how much of your environment is covered by your TEM program based on your scope and objectives.
- Exposure compliance rate. A measure of how well you are complying with internal or external standards or regulations based on your exposure data.
You can also use feedback from your stakeholders, such as management, security teams, or auditors, to evaluate the value and benefits of your TEM program. Based on these metrics and feedback, you can identify areas for improvement and optimization, and adjust your scope, objectives, or processes accordingly.
Wrap-Up
TEM is a vital component of a modern and effective cybersecurity strategy. By implementing TEM for your business fast, you can gain a clear and comprehensive view of your cyber risk landscape, and take proactive and prioritized actions to reduce it. This will help you to protect your assets, data, and users from cyber threats, and enhance your security posture and resilience.
We hope this blog post has given you some useful tips and best practices on how to implement TEM for your business fast.
