Digital Risk Posture Rating
A Digital Risk Posture Rating in the context of cybersecurity is a quantitative or qualitative score that represents an organization's overall cybersecurity health and resilience against digital threats, as perceived from an external, often attacker-centric, viewpoint. It's a dynamic assessment that goes beyond traditional internal audits to provide a continuous, objective measure of how well an organization is protecting its digital assets and reputation in the publicly accessible internet landscape.
This rating is typically derived from the continuous analysis of various external factors that contribute to an organization's digital risk. It aims to answer the question: "How vulnerable or secure does this organization appear to a cyber adversary, and what is the potential impact of those perceived risks?"
Here's a detailed breakdown:
Key Characteristics:
External Perspective: The defining feature. Unlike internal assessments, it focuses exclusively on information discoverable from outside the organization's network. This includes what is visible on the open internet, the dark web, social media, and through publicly exposed infrastructure.
Continuous Assessment: It's not a one-time snapshot but an ongoing evaluation. As an organization's digital footprint changes (e.g., new cloud services, updated websites, changes in DNS records) or as new threats emerge, the rating is dynamically adjusted.
Holistic Scope: It encompasses a broad range of digital risks, extending beyond just technical vulnerabilities to include:
Cybersecurity Weaknesses: Open ports, misconfigured servers, outdated software versions, weak cryptographic protocols, and vulnerabilities in web applications.
Data Exposure: Leaked credentials on the dark web, sensitive data in publicly accessible code repositories, exposed cloud storage buckets.
Brand and Reputation Risks: Brand impersonation, phishing site proliferation, negative sentiment from cybersecurity incidents, and fraudulent domains.
Supply Chain Risks: Vulnerabilities or poor security practices identified in an organization's third-party vendors and partners.
Compliance Indicators: Adherence (or lack thereof) to best practices or regulatory requirements visible externally (e.g., proper email authentication records like DMARC, SPF, DKIM).
Actionable Insights: While a single score provides high-level understanding, the underlying data offers granular details and specific findings that enable organizations to understand why their rating is what it is and what steps they need to take to improve it.
Comparative Analysis (Benchmarking): Often, these ratings enable organizations to compare their posture with that of industry peers or established best practices, providing context for their performance.
Factors Contributing to a Digital Risk Posture Rating:
The methodologies for calculating a rating can vary, but generally consider inputs such as:
Attack Surface Enumeration: The size and complexity of the organization's internet-facing assets (number of domains, IPs, web applications, cloud instances). A larger or more complex surface can imply more potential exposure if not managed well.
Vulnerability Findings: The number, severity, and exploitability of identified vulnerabilities on external assets.
Misconfigurations: Detection of insecure configurations on servers, cloud environments, DNS records, etc.
Exposed Data: Presence of sensitive information, credentials, or intellectual property in public spaces.
Dark Web Activity: Mentions of the organization or its executives/employees on dark web forums, sale of compromised credentials, or ransomware group activity targeting the sector.
Email Security Posture: Strength of email authentication mechanisms (DMARC, SPF, DKIM) to prevent impersonation and phishing.
Web Application Security: Assessments of common web application vulnerabilities (e.g., those found in OWASP Top 10 categories).
Third-Party and Supply Chain Security: The external security posture of an organization's critical digital partners.
Positive Security Controls: The presence and proper configuration of security mechanisms like Web Application Firewalls (WAFs), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) on external portals, and secure DNSSEC implementation.
Purpose and Benefits:
Objective Measurement: Provides an unbiased, quantifiable measure of external cybersecurity risk.
Executive Visibility: Simplifies complex security information into an easily understandable score for non-technical stakeholders (board members, executives).
Risk Prioritization: Helps organizations focus remediation efforts on the most critical external risks that are impacting their score.
Third-Party Risk Management: Allows organizations to quickly assess the digital risk posture of their vendors and partners.
Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A): Provides rapid insights into the cybersecurity health of potential acquisition targets.
Insurance Underwriting: Increasingly used by cyber insurance providers to assess risk and determine premiums.
Benchmarking: Enables comparison against competitors and industry averages.
Continuous Improvement: Drives ongoing security enhancements by providing real-time feedback on changes to the external posture.
In essence, a Digital Risk Posture Rating serves as a vital external cybersecurity health report, enabling organizations to understand, manage, and communicate their external risk effectively in an ever-evolving threat landscape.
ThreatNG, as an all-in-one external attack surface management, digital risk protection, and security ratings solution, offers comprehensive capabilities that directly support and enhance an organization's
Digital Risk Posture Rating. ThreatNG provides a continuous, outside-in evaluation of an organization's digital risk posture by identifying exposed assets, critical vulnerabilities, and digital risks from the perspective of an unauthenticated attacker, mapping these findings to provide a comprehensive security rating. This capability enables organizations to proactively uncover and address external security gaps that impact their digital risk posture, thereby strengthening their overall security standing.
ThreatNG's Role in Digital Risk Posture Rating
1. External Discovery: ThreatNG's ability to perform purely external unauthenticated discovery using no connectors is crucial for establishing an accurate Digital Risk Posture Rating. This means it can identify an organization's digital footprint as an attacker would see it, without needing internal access or credentials. This unauthenticated discovery provides an accurate "outside-in" view, fundamental for a robust digital risk posture rating as it ensures all internet-facing assets are accounted for.
How ThreatNG Helps: ThreatNG automatically discovers an organization's internet-facing assets, including domains, subdomains, IP addresses, cloud services, and mobile applications. This helps in establishing a comprehensive asset inventory from an external perspective, ensuring no unknown exposures contribute to the digital risk posture.
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: ThreatNG discovers an old, forgotten subdomain hosting an outdated application that was not in the internal asset register. This previously unknown exposure immediately negatively impacts the organization's Digital Risk Posture Rating by adding an unmanaged, vulnerable asset to its attack surface.
2. External Assessment: ThreatNG performs a wide range of external assessments that directly feed into the Digital Risk Posture Rating by highlighting potential risks and vulnerabilities.
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility:
How ThreatNG Helps: ThreatNG analyzes the parts of a web application accessible from the outside world to identify potential entry points for attackers. This score is substantiated by External Attack Surface and Digital Risk Intelligence, including Domain Intelligence.
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: ThreatNG's assessment reveals a critical vulnerability in a public-facing web application that could allow for hijacking. This finding would significantly lower the Digital Risk Posture Rating, indicating a high external exposure to web-based attacks.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility:
How ThreatNG Helps: To evaluate the subdomain takeover susceptibility of a website, ThreatNG uses external attack surface and digital risk intelligence that incorporates Domain Intelligence, including a comprehensive analysis of the website's subdomains, DNS records, SSL certificate statuses, and other relevant factors.
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: ThreatNG discovers an orphaned DNS record for a key subdomain that could be taken over by an attacker. This immediate vulnerability would cause a notable drop in the Digital Risk Posture Rating, reflecting the high risk of brand impersonation and potential phishing attacks.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility:
How ThreatNG Helps: This susceptibility score is derived from Sentiment and Financials Findings, Domain Intelligence (DNS Intelligence capabilities like Domain Name Permutations and Web3 Domains; and Email Intelligence that provides email security presence and format prediction), and Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials).
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: ThreatNG flags a high number of harvested organizational emails found on the dark web combined with weak DMARC, SPF, or DKIM records detected via Email Intelligence. This indicates a high susceptibility to phishing and BEC attacks, directly lowering the Digital Risk Posture Rating due to increased risk of credential compromise and fraud.
Brand Damage Susceptibility:
How ThreatNG Helps: This score is derived from attack surface intelligence, digital risk intelligence, ESG Violations, Sentiment and Financials (Lawsuits, SEC filings, SEC Form 8-Ks, and Negative News), and Domain Intelligence (Domain Name Permutations and Web3 Domains that are available and taken).
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: ThreatNG detects numerous instances of brand impersonation on newly registered domain permutations. This reflects a high susceptibility to brand damage, which would negatively impact the Digital Risk Posture Rating, signaling an increased risk of reputational harm and customer deception.
Data Leak Susceptibility:
How ThreatNG Helps: This is derived from external attack surface and digital risk intelligence based on Cloud and SaaS Exposure, Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials), Domain Intelligence (DNS Intelligence capabilities which include Domain Name Permutations and Web3 Domains that are available and taken; and Email Intelligence that provides email security presence and format prediction), and Sentiment and Financials (Lawsuits and SEC Form 8-Ks).
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: ThreatNG reveals an open AWS S3 bucket containing sensitive customer data. This critical finding immediately lowers the Digital Risk Posture Rating, indicating a severe data exposure risk and potential for regulatory penalties.
Cyber Risk Exposure:
How ThreatNG Helps: This score considers parameters ThreatNG's Domain Intelligence module covers, including certificates, subdomain headers, vulnerabilities, and sensitive ports. Code Secret Exposure, which discovers code repositories and their exposure level and investigates their contents for sensitive data, is factored into the score. Cloud and SaaS Exposure evaluates cloud services and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. Additionally, the score considers the organization's compromised credentials on the dark web, which increases the risk of successful attacks.
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: ThreatNG identifies a publicly exposed database with an open sensitive port and a critical CVE. This directly contributes to a higher Cyber Risk Exposure score, significantly lowering the overall Digital Risk Posture Rating.
Supply Chain & Third Party Exposure:
How ThreatNG Helps: This is derived from Domain Intelligence (Enumeration of Vendor Technologies from DNS and Subdomains), Technology Stack, and Cloud and SaaS Exposure.
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: ThreatNG discovers that a critical third-party vendor used by the organization has a publicly exposed, unpatched server. This directly increases the organization's supply chain exposure score, negatively impacting its Digital Risk Posture Rating by highlighting inherited risk.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility:
How ThreatNG Helps: This is calculated based on external attack surface and digital risk intelligence, which includes domain intelligence (exposed sensitive ports, exposed private IPs, and known vulnerabilities), dark web presence (compromised credentials and ransomware events and gang activity), and sentiment and financials (SEC Form 8-Ks).
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: ThreatNG detects a high volume of compromised credentials associated with the organization on the dark web and identifies recent ransomware gang activity targeting similar organizations. This elevated susceptibility to breaches and ransomware directly lowers the Digital Risk Posture Rating.
Mobile App Exposure:
How ThreatNG Helps: ThreatNG evaluates how exposed an organization’s mobile apps are through the discovery of them in marketplaces and for the presence of Access Credentials, Security Credentials, and Platform Specific Identifiers within their contents.
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: ThreatNG identifies an organization's public mobile app containing hardcoded API keys. This critical exposure leads to a decrease in the Digital Risk Posture Rating due to the direct risk of credential compromise.
Positive Security Indicators:
How ThreatNG Helps: ThreatNG identifies and highlights an organization's security strengths. Instead of only focusing on vulnerabilities, this feature detects the presence of beneficial security controls and configurations, such as Web Application Firewalls or multi-factor authentication. It validates these positive measures from the perspective of an external attacker, providing objective evidence of their effectiveness.
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: ThreatNG detects the presence of a Web Application Firewall (WAF) on a key public web application and validates its effectiveness. This positive indicator would improve the Digital Risk Posture Rating, demonstrating a strong defensive posture against common web attacks.
3. Reporting: ThreatNG offers various reporting capabilities, including Executive, Technical, Prioritized (High, Medium, Low, and Informational), Security Ratings, Inventory, Ransomware Susceptibility, U.S. SEC Filings, and External GRC Assessment Mappings (eg, PCI DSS). These reports are essential for understanding and communicating the Digital Risk Posture Rating.
How ThreatNG Helps: The "Security Ratings" report directly provides the Digital Risk Posture Rating. The detailed reports, including technical findings and prioritized risks, explain the components influencing the rating, allowing stakeholders to understand
why the rating is what it is and what actions are needed to improve it.Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: An executive receives ThreatNG's "Executive" report, which prominently displays the current Digital Risk Posture Rating. If the rating is low, the accompanying "Prioritized" report details the high-severity vulnerabilities and data leaks contributing to it, enabling informed decision-making on remediation efforts.
4. Continuous Monitoring: ThreatNG provides continuous monitoring of the external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings of all organizations.
How ThreatNG Helps: For Digital Risk Posture Rating, continuous monitoring is critical because an organization's external posture is constantly evolving. This ensures that the rating dynamically reflects new exposures or resolved issues, providing an up-to-date and accurate measure of risk.
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: A development team inadvertently exposes a testing environment to the internet overnight. ThreatNG's continuous monitoring immediately detects this new asset and its vulnerabilities, instantly impacting the Digital Risk Posture Rating, providing real-time feedback on changes to the external risk landscape.
5. Investigation Modules: ThreatNG's investigation modules offer deep insights into various aspects of an organization's external posture, which are invaluable for understanding and improving the Digital Risk Posture Rating.
Domain Intelligence:
How ThreatNG Helps: Provides a comprehensive overview of an organization's digital presence, including Domain Overview (Digital Presence Word Cloud, Microsoft Entra Identification and Domain Enumeration, Bug Bounty Programs, and related SwaggerHub instances), DNS Intelligence (Domain Record Analysis, Domain Name Permutations, Web3 Domains), Email Intelligence (Security Presence, Format Predictions, Harvested Emails), WHOIS Intelligence (WHOIS Analysis and Other Domains Owned), and detailed Subdomain Intelligence.
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: An organization's Digital Risk Posture Rating unexpectedly drops. Investigation using Domain Intelligence reveals that numerous lookalike domains have been registered by malicious actors (Domain Name Permutations) and are being used for phishing, negatively impacting the brand damage and BEC/Phishing susceptibility scores, thus lowering the overall rating.
Sensitive Code Exposure:
How ThreatNG Helps: Discovers public code repositories uncovering digital risks that include Access Credentials (API Keys, Access Tokens, Generic Credentials), Cloud Credentials, Security Credentials (Cryptographic Keys), Other Secrets, Configuration Files, Database Exposures, Application Data Exposures, Activity Records, Communication Platform Configurations, Development Environment Configurations, Security Testing Tools, Cloud Service Configurations, Remote Access Credentials, System Utilities, Personal Data, and User Activity.
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: ThreatNG's Code Repository Exposure module reveals hardcoded AWS Access Key IDs in a public GitHub repository. This severe data leak immediately and significantly lowers the Digital Risk Posture Rating due to the critical risk of cloud environment compromise.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure:
How ThreatNG Helps: Identifies Sanctioned Cloud Services, Unsanctioned Cloud Services, Cloud Service Impersonations, and Open Exposed Cloud Buckets of AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. It also covers various SaaS implementations like Looker, Salesforce, Slack, Workday, Okta, and ServiceNow.
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: ThreatNG discovers an unsanctioned SaaS application being used by a department or an Amazon S3 bucket inadvertently made public. These findings increase the "Cloud and SaaS Exposure" score, leading to a reduction in the overall Digital Risk Posture Rating due to unmanaged cloud risk.
Dark Web Presence:
How ThreatNG Helps: Identifies organizational mentions of Related or Defined People, Places, or Things, Associated Ransomware Events, and Associated Compromised Credentials.
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: ThreatNG's monitoring identifies a large number of compromised employee credentials available on the dark web. This immediately increases the organization's "Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility" and "BEC & Phishing Susceptibility" scores, thereby negatively impacting the Digital Risk Posture Rating.
6. Intelligence Repositories (DarCache): Contextualizing Digital Risk Posture Rating ThreatNG's continuously updated intelligence repositories, branded as DarCache, provide critical context that directly influences the Digital Risk Posture Rating.
Dark Web (DarCache Dark Web), Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture), Ransomware Groups and Activities (DarCache Ransomware): Tracking Over 70 Ransomware Gangs.
How ThreatNG Helps: This intelligence directly informs the Digital Risk Posture Rating by quantifying the real-world threats and potential breaches an organization faces externally.
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: If ThreatNG's DarCache Ransomware indicates a surge in activity by a ransomware group known to exploit a specific vulnerability the organization has (as identified by ThreatNG's assessments), the inherent risk of that vulnerability increases, which would be reflected in a lower Digital Risk Posture Rating.
Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): Provides a holistic and proactive approach to managing external risks and vulnerabilities by understanding their real-world exploitability, the likelihood of exploitation, and the potential impact. It includes NVD (DarCache NVD), EPSS (DarCache EPSS), KEV (DarCache KEV), and Verified Proof-of-Concept (PoC) Exploits (DarCache eXploit).
How ThreatNG Helps: This data provides a deep understanding of the technical characteristics, potential impact, likelihood of exploitation, and active exploitation status of each vulnerability, directly feeding into the risk calculations for the Digital Risk Posture Rating.
Digital Risk Posture Rating Example: ThreatNG's DarCache KEV identifies that a critical vulnerability on a public-facing server is actively being exploited in the wild. This elevated threat level for an identified vulnerability would significantly lower the Digital Risk Posture Rating, emphasizing the immediate need for remediation. ThreatNG's DarCache EPSS data also allows the rating to dynamically adjust based on the probability of a vulnerability being exploited, providing a more forward-looking view of risk.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's external focus creates powerful synergies with other internal-facing cybersecurity tools, enriching their data and contributing to a more complete Digital Risk Posture understanding.
Complementary Solutions: Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Systems
Synergy Example: ThreatNG continuously identifies an exposed critical service on the internet. This external intelligence is fed into the SIEM. If the SIEM then detects unusual traffic patterns or brute-force login attempts originating from external sources targeting that exposed service, the correlation of external exposure (from ThreatNG) and internal activity (from SIEM) allows for a higher-fidelity alert and faster, more informed incident response. The combined data provides a more accurate and dynamic Digital Risk Posture Rating by linking external exposure to internal attack attempts.
Complementary Solutions: Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Platforms
Synergy Example: ThreatNG's "Security Ratings" and the granular findings that comprise them can be directly imported into a dedicated GRC platform. For instance, if ThreatNG's Digital Risk Posture Rating drops due to a new data leak, this information automatically updates the risk register within the GRC platform. This ensures the GRC platform's view of risk is continuously informed by real-world external exposures, providing a holistic and current risk posture.
Complementary Solutions: Vulnerability Management (VM) Solutions
Synergy Example: ThreatNG's external vulnerability findings, enriched with NVD, EPSS, and KEV data from DarCache, can be prioritized and fed into an internal VM solution. If ThreatNG continuously flags a high-severity, actively exploited (KEV) vulnerability on a public-facing web server, the VM solution can then prioritize its internal scanning and patching activities on that specific asset. This ensures that the most critical external risks, which heavily influence the Digital Risk Posture Rating, are addressed efficiently.
Complementary Solutions: Identity and Access Management (IAM) Systems
Synergy Example: When ThreatNG's Dark Web Presence module continuously identifies new compromised credentials associated with the organization, this information can be pushed to an IAM system. The IAM system can then automatically trigger mandatory password resets for the affected accounts or enforce multi-factor authentication. This direct action mitigates a critical external risk component identified by ThreatNG, leading to an improved Digital Risk Posture Rating.
Complementary Solutions: Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Platforms
Synergy Example: If ThreatNG continuously detects a critical data leak (e.g., sensitive configuration files exposed on a public online sharing platform), this alert can initiate an automated playbook in a SOAR platform. The SOAR platform could then automatically alert the responsible team, create a remediation ticket, notify stakeholders, and potentially initiate a takedown request. This automated response to external findings directly contributes to maintaining a healthier Digital Risk Posture Rating by rapidly addressing critical exposures.
By combining ThreatNG's unique external perspective with the internal visibility and process automation of complementary solutions, organizations can achieve a more robust and proactive cybersecurity posture, significantly strengthening their overall Digital Risk Posture Rating.
