Attack surface management (ASM) is becoming increasingly important for businesses today. The attack surface is expanding and becoming more complex than ever before, driven by numerous factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting shift to remote work, widespread cloud adoption and the resulting growth of shadow IT, increased use of managed services (SaaS), and third-party vendor services.

Attack surface management (ASM) and vulnerability management (VM) are often confused, but they’re not the same. The primary difference between the two is scope: Attack surface management and external attack surface management (EASM) assume that a company has many unknown assets and therefore begin with discovery. Vulnerability management, on the other hand, operates on the list of known assets.

Resilient cybersecurity posture can only be achieved with a full understanding of your internal and external attack surface. CrowdStrike Falcon® Surface builds on our award-winning adversary intelligence with cutting-edge external attack surface management (EASM) capabilities for a complete picture of known and unknown externally exposed assets, all delivered via the unified CrowdStrike Falcon® platform.

Attack surface management (ASM) software is a set of automated tools that monitor and manage external digital assets that contain, transmit, or process sensitive data. ASM software identifies misconfigurations and vulnerabilities that cybercriminals could exploit for malicious purposes that result in data breaches or other serious security incidents.

Cybercriminals exploit vulnerabilities and misconfigurations across an organization’s attack surface to gain unauthorized access to sensitive data. The prevalence of digital transformation and outsourcing in the current threat landscape means an organization’s attack vectors can easily increase by millions each day. This ever-growing number makes it hard to identify cyber threats and prioritize remediation before a data breach occurs.