Attack Surface Management (ASM) continuously discovers, inventories, and monitors all your internet-facing assets—domains, IPs, cloud resources, shadow IT. It shows you what attackers see and finds exposures before they're exploited.
Quick answer: Attack Surface Management (ASM) continuously discovers, inventories, and monitors all your internet-facing assets—domains, IPs, cloud resources, shadow IT. It shows you what attackers see and finds exposures before they're exploited.
The Problem ASM Solves
You can't secure what you don't know about.
Most organisations don't have complete visibility of their external exposure:
- Forgotten subdomains
- Shadow IT cloud services
- Test environments still running
- Acquired company assets
- Third-party hosted services
- Exposed development systems
- Misconfigured cloud storage
What Attack Surface Means
Your external attack surface is everything visible from the internet that could be targeted:
- Domains and subdomains
- IP addresses
- Web applications
- APIs
- Email systems
- VPN endpoints
- Cloud resources
- Exposed services
- Certificates
- DNS records
How ASM Works
1. Discovery
Find everything:- Start from known domains
- Enumerate subdomains
- Identify IP ranges
- Discover cloud resources
- Find connected services
- Identify shadow IT
2. Inventory
Catalogue assets:- What's running
- What technologies are in use
- Who owns it
- What's the business context
- Is it supposed to be there
3. Assessment
Evaluate risk:- Vulnerabilities present
- Misconfigurations
- Expired certificates
- Exposed sensitive data
- Outdated software
- Weak encryption
4. Monitoring
Continuous vigilance:- New assets appearing
- Configuration changes
- New vulnerabilities affecting your stack
- Certificate expiration approaching
- Threat intelligence matches
5. Prioritisation
Focus effort:- Business criticality
- Exploitability
- Exposure level
- Data sensitivity
What ASM Finds
Typical discoveries:
*"You have a subdomain dev.yourcompany.com running an old WordPress with known vulnerabilities."*
*"An S3 bucket with your company name is publicly readable."*
*"A test server at staging.yourcompany.com is exposing database ports."*
*"Your SSL certificate expires in 7 days."*
*"A third-party vendor is hosting an application with your branding at risk-vendor.com/yourcompany."*
ASM vs Vulnerability Scanning
| ASM | Vulnerability Scanning | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point | Discovers assets | Scans known assets |
| Scope | External exposure | Can be internal or external |
| Approach | Reconnaissance | Assessment |
| Perspective | Attacker view | Defender view |
| Coverage | Unknown unknowns | Known assets |
Why ASM Matters in 2026
Cloud sprawl: Cloud makes it easy to spin up resources—and forget about them. ASM catches the sprawl.
Shadow IT: Departments deploy SaaS without IT involvement. ASM finds it.
Digital transformation: More online services = larger attack surface. ASM keeps pace.
M&A activity: Acquiring companies means inheriting unknown exposure. ASM maps it.
Attacker automation: Attackers continuously scan the internet. Your discovery needs to match their speed.
Implementing ASM
For smaller organisations:
- Start with manual discovery
- Regular external scanning
- Quarterly review of exposure
- Dedicated ASM platform
- Continuous monitoring
- Integration with vulnerability management
- Automated alerting
- Do we know all our domains?
- Do we know all our cloud resources?
- When did we last look for shadow IT?
- How quickly would we find new exposure?
What We Provide
Our security services include external exposure assessment:
- Discovery of your attack surface
- Regular external vulnerability scanning
- Cloud security posture checking
- Ongoing monitoring for changes
- Prioritised remediation guidance
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