Look back across history and you’ll see there has been plenty of empires, but even the longest-lasting of them still eventually came to an end. When we talk about larger businesses operating online and taking advantage of new web-based business technologies no one is going to compare any of them to empires, perhaps with the exception of Google. But to continue on that tangent briefly, there is not better example of an empire failing because it ended being spread to thin quite like the Mongol empire.
The reason we mention it as our segue here to this week’s blog topic is because nowadays as businesses expand in the digital space they naturally assume more of a surface, or what you might call the ‘expanse’ of their business in Cyberspace to the extent they’ve wanted / needed to move it there. With all that expansion comes greater risk of cyber-attacks, and that leads us right into discussing attack surface management. So what is that exactly? Let us explain.
An attack surface is every asset that an organization has facing the Internet that may be exploited as entry points in a cyber-attack. They could be anything from websites, subdomains, hardware, applications, to clod resources or IP addresses. Social media accounts or even vendor infrastructures can also be a part of the ‘vulnerabilities’ based on the size of your surface.
All of which will be of interest to us here at 4GoodHosting as quality Canadian web hosting providers given how web hosting is very much an abutment for these businesses with the way it’s a part of the foundation for their online presence. So let’s dig further into this topic as it relates to cloud security for businesses.
Rapid Expansions
We only touched on the possibility for an attack surface above. They are rapidly expanding and can now include any IT asset connected to the internet, so we can add IoT devices, Kubernetes clusters, and cloud platforms to the list of potential spots where threat actors could infiltrate and initiate an attack. Having external network vulnerabilities creating an environment that can prompt a potential breach is an issue too.
It’s for these reasons that attack surface management is a bit of a new buzzword in cyber security circles, and those tasked with keeping businesses’ digital assets secure likely have already become very familiar with it. The key is in first identifying all external assets with the aim to discover vulnerabilities or exposures before threats do. There is also a priority on vulnerabilities based on risk so that remediation efforts can focus on the most critical exposures.
Logically then, attack surface managements needs to be based on continuous, ongoing reviews of potential vulnerabilities as new, more sophisticated threats emerge and attack surfaces expand. It’s interesting that term was being bandied about early as 2014, but it is only recent developments and trends that have made it put more at the forefront for cyber security than before.
6 Primaries
Here are the trends in business nowadays that are enhancing the risk posed by having expanded attack surfaces.
- Hybrid Work – Facilitating remote work inherently creates an environment where companies are more dependent on technology while less affected by an limitations based on location. But the benefits are accompanied by an expanded attack surface and the potential for increased exposures.
- Cloud Computing – The speed and enthusiasm with which businesses have adopted cloud computing has also spread out the attack surface at a speed that cyber security platforms haven’t been able to keep up with. This frequently results in technical debt or insecure configurations.
- Shadow IT – It is quite common now for employees now to be using their own devices and services to work with company data as needed, and how ‘shadow IT’ expands attack surface risks is fairly self-explanatory.
- Connected Devices – Internet-connected devices have exploded in numbers over recent years, and their related implementation in business environments has created a new variance with attack surfaces at high risk. One that’s directly connected to the insecurity of many IoT devices.
- Digital Transformation – The way companies are digitizing as broadly, deeply, and quickly as possible to stay competitive means they’re at the same time creating new attack surface while layers, plus altering the layers that already exist.
- Development Expectations – Always launching new features and products is an expectation for many businesses, and this has factored into how quickly technologies will go to market. There is pressure to meet these demands, and that pressure may lead to new lines of code being hastily written. Again, fairly self-explanatory with relation to growing attack surfaces.
The attack surface has become significantly more widespread and more difficult to keep contained as organizations grow their IT infrastructure. Plus this growth will often occur despite resource shortages that come at an unideal time with a record-breaking 146 billion cyber threats reported for 2022 and likely much of the same when this year is tallied up.
It’s for all these reasons that attack surface management is even more of a priority for organizations as they take on key challenges with the frontline of cybersecurity.
