Intro

At TeamFence we are always looking for new ways to improve the security posture of our clients. In this blog post, we will discuss the Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) framework and how it can help organizations minimize exposure to cyber attacks. We will also compare CTEM with Red Teaming and simulated attacks to understand the benefits of adopting a proactive approach to security.

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What is CTEM?

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) is a dynamic and ongoing five-stage framework designed to minimize exposure to cyber attacks. This proactive approach aids organizations in identifying vulnerabilities, mapping them to potential attack paths, prioritizing based on the risk to critical assets, and tracking the progress of remediation efforts. Companies around the world are adopting CTEM to effectively manage exposures and bolster their security posture.

CTEM involves a thorough evaluation of an organization’s entire ecosystem, encompassing networks, systems, assets, and more, to detect exposures and weaknesses. The primary goal is to reduce the likelihood that these vulnerabilities will be exploited by attackers. Implementing a CTEM program ensures continuous improvement of security measures by identifying and addressing potentially problematic areas before they can be exploited.

The “continuous” aspect of CTEM emphasizes the iterative relationship between the CTEM program and risk remediation efforts. Data generated from both elements inform each other, facilitating increasingly optimal decisions on managing exposure risks.

By leveraging CTEM, organizations can ensure a resilient security framework that adapts to evolving threats, continuously safeguarding their critical assets and maintaining robust protection against cyber attacks.

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The five steps of the CTEM framework

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Stage 1 – Scoping

The initial stage involves understanding your attack surfaces and determining the business importance of each asset, recognizing that these factors will evolve over time. This includes identifying key attack surfaces with input from various decision-makers, such as leaders from IT, Legal, GRC, Dev, R&D, Product, and Business Ops teams.

Stage 2 – Discovery

During the discovery stage, each asset is assessed for potential exposures and the associated risks are analyzed. This goes beyond identifying standalone vulnerabilities to include other types of exposures, such as Active Directory, identity, and configuration risks, and considers how these exposures might be chained together to create attack paths to assets.

Stage 3 – Prioritization

In the prioritization stage, exposures are analyzed to determine their threat level based on known real-world incidents and the importance of the impacted assets. This step is crucial because organizations often face more exposures than they can address due to the sheer volume and constantly changing environments. CTEM helps prioritize remediations that most effectively reduce risk to critical assets, considering all types of exposures, including identities and misconfigurations.

Stage 4 – Validation

The validation stage examines how attacks can occur and their likelihood, using various tools for different purposes. Sometimes, validation aids in prioritization as in Stage 3, while other times it is used to continually test security controls or automate periodic penetration testing.

Stage 5 – Mobilization

The mobilization stage ensures that everyone understands their roles and responsibilities within the context of the program. Effective mobilization requires that both the security and IT teams involved in remediation efforts have clarity on the risk reduction value of their actions and can report on the overall trend of improvements in the security posture over time.

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Is CTEM better than Red Teaming?

CTEM and Red Teaming are both valuable tools for enhancing an organization’s security posture, but they serve different purposes. If our main goal is to enhance the security posture of an organization, CTEM is the way to go. Let’s see why:

Red Teaming

A red teaming activity aims to identify vulnerabilities in a company’s assets by simulating an attack to gain control of critical systems. This process involves a team of ethical hackers who use an opportunistic approach to find weaknesses and exploit them, focusing solely on achieving their objective without considering other issues or alternative paths.

The following image could represent a common red teaming iteration:

While red teaming provides valuable insights into potential security gaps, it has some notable limitations.

Firstly, it offers a snapshot in time rather than a continuous assessment. The vulnerabilities identified during a red teaming exercise may become outdated quickly as new threats emerge and the company’s environment evolves.

Secondly, red teaming does not provide a comprehensive view of all possible vulnerabilities. It focuses on specific attack vectors and paths, potentially overlooking other critical areas of exposure. This narrow scope can leave some vulnerabilities undetected, especially those that do not align with the specific tactics used by the red team.

Finally, as we can see from the image above, red teaming is a time-consuming and resource-intensive process that may not be feasible for organizations with limited budgets or operational constraints. The high cost and effort required to conduct red teaming exercises can limit their frequency and effectiveness in identifying and addressing vulnerabilities. Additionally, the output of a red teaming exercise is a list of vulnerabilities rather than a prioritized list of exposures, often forcing clients to figure out on their own how to implement the necessary mitigations.

CTEM

CTEM, on the other hand, resolves many of the problems an organization might face when trying to improve its security posture:

Output absorbing: many organizations struggle to absorb the output of red teaming or other attack simulation exercises, finding the results overwhelming and challenging to understand and prioritize. CTEM includes a mobilization stage that ensures internal teams fully understand the risks, allowing them to prioritize and implement remediation measures effectively.

Time & Money consuming: we have to consider that this kind of activities are B2B services, and they are expensive. CTEM is a more cost-effective approach to security, since the enumeration phase of the simulated attacks is replaced by a collaborative effort between the security and IT teams to identify all the assets and exposures in the organization.

Assets coverage: CTEM allows to have a 100% coverage of the assets, since the discovery phase is not limited to the assets that the red team can find, but it is a collaborative effort between the security and IT teams. This means that all the assets are taken into consideration, and the risk is calculated based on the importance of the asset.

Continuous: CTEM is a continuous process, which means that the organization is always aware of the risks and can act accordingly. The security team is than able to track the infrastructure changes, follow the new threats and vulnerabilities emerging and keep the security posture up to date. This remove the majority of the responsibility of the security from the IT team, and the client can focus on the business.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while red teaming is useful for uncovering certain vulnerabilities and testing the effectiveness of a company’s defenses against specific attack scenarios, its limitations highlight the need for more continuous, comprehensive, and context-aware security assessments.

At TeamFence, we believe that CTEM offers a more effective and sustainable approach to security by providing the security as a service that continuously monitors and manages an organization’s exposure to cyber threats. By adopting CTEM, companies can proactively identify and address vulnerabilities, prioritize remediation efforts, and maintain a resilient security posture that adapts to evolving threats.

Contact us to learn more about how CTEM can help your organization stay ahead of cyber threats and protect your critical assets.

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