External Assessment

An External Assessment in the context of cybersecurity is a security evaluation that examines an organization's public-facing digital footprint and infrastructure from the perspective of an external, unauthenticated attacker. It is performed outside the organization's network perimeter and focuses solely on assets accessible over the internet.

The primary goal of an external assessment is to identify what a cybercriminal can see and exploit before they attempt a real attack, thereby hardening the organization's perimeter defenses.

Key Components and Methodology

External assessments are proactive and systematic, combining automated scanning with manual verification to uncover potential entry points and vulnerabilities.

1. Asset Identification and Reconnaissance

The first step is to discover the complete external attack surface. This phase simulates a hacker gathering intelligence on the target, identifying:

• Internet-Facing Assets: Websites, web applications, and public IP addresses.

• Perimeter Services: Email servers, DNS servers, VPN gateways, firewalls, and routers.

• Cloud-Based Services: Cloud services used for storage, computing, and applications.

2. Vulnerability Analysis and Exploitation

Once assets are identified, the assessment moves to finding and confirming security weaknesses. This includes:

• Port Scanning and Topology Discovery: Systematically scanning the entire range of TCP and UDP ports to identify and analyze all open ports that could serve as potential entry points.

• Misconfiguration and Outdated Software: Checking for incorrect settings in systems or applications and detecting outdated software versions with known vulnerabilities (CVEs) that attackers commonly exploit.

• Authentication and Access Control Testing: Testing for weak authentication mechanisms, default credentials, or misconfigured permissions on public-facing assets.

• Information Leakage: Checking for public information disclosure, such as exposed files, internal hostnames, or a lack of encryption, that could aid a further attack.

3. Risk Prioritization and Reporting

The findings are analyzed and ranked to focus remediation efforts.

• Prioritization: Vulnerabilities are ranked by severity, likelihood of exploitation, and potential business impact if successfully exploited.

• Reporting: A detailed report is generated, including an executive summary, a list of critical vulnerabilities, and actionable remediation recommendations.

Comparison to Internal Assessment

External assessments provide an unbiased perspective of security from the outside, focused on preventing unauthorized access. They differ significantly from internal assessments, which are conducted within the network (often under the assumption of a breach or insider threat) to assess lateral movement and privilege-escalation risks. External tests primarily harden the entry points.

External assessments are often a required component for regulatory compliance (e.g., HIPAA, PCI).

ThreatNG is specifically designed to perform a continuous, unauthenticated External Assessment for an organization, effectively serving as an attacker-simulation tool to discover and evaluate the organization's public-facing digital footprint comprehensively.

ThreatNG's Role in Performing an External Assessment

External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring

ThreatNG provides the fundamental capability of any external assessment: External Discovery. It performs this discovery using a purely external unauthenticated method, meaning it finds assets accessible from the internet without requiring any internal access or privileged credentials, perfectly replicating the reconnaissance phase of a cybercriminal. This agentless approach is maintained through Continuous Monitoring of the external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings, ensuring that the assessment remains current and immediately flags any newly exposed assets or services.

External Assessment and Examples

ThreatNG performs several focused external assessments that align with a comprehensive security evaluation:

• Cyber Risk Exposure: This rating focuses on key external misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. It identifies risks like invalid Certificates, Cloud Exposure (exposed open cloud buckets), and weaknesses in Domain Name Record Analysis (missing DMARC and SPF records). The assessment includes Subdomains intelligence, which checks for exposed ports, private IPs, Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility, and missing headers like HSTS.

• Example: ThreatNG identifies that a public-facing web server's certificate is invalid and that the server is not automatically redirecting traffic to HTTPS, both of which are critical external configuration errors contributing to a poor Cyber Risk Exposure rating.

• Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: This assessment checks for "dangling DNS". It involves:

• Performing external discovery to identify all associated subdomains.

• Using DNS enumeration to find CNAME records pointing to third-party services.

• Performing a specific validation check to determine if the CNAME points to an inactive or unclaimed resource on a vendor's platform.

• Example: ThreatNG confirms that a subdomain, promo.company.com, points to an unclaimed external content management service, such as Tumblr, via a CNAME record, therebyverifying a high-risk external vulnerability.

• Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: This assessment rates the security of subdomains by analyzing the presence or absence of key security headers, such as Content-Security-Policy and X-Frame-Options.

• Example: ThreatNG remotely assesses an external-facing application and determines that it is missing the Content-Security-Policy header, increasing its susceptibility to cross-site scripting attacks.

Investigation Modules and Examples

The investigation modules are the tools ThreatNG uses to gather the detailed evidence for the external assessment:

• Subdomain Intelligence: This module is central to the external assessment, checking for HTTP Responses, Header Analysis, and Server Headers. It includes port discovery and the identification of publicly exposed services, such as Databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL) and Remote Access Services (SSH, RDP).

• Example: The module identifies an exposed Elasticsearch database port on a publicly accessible server, which is immediately flagged as a critical open door.

• Sensitive Code Exposure: This module directly addresses information leakage by discovering public code repositories and finding exposed Access Credentials (e.g., AWS Access Key ID, Stripe API Key) and Configuration Files.

• Example: ThreatNG locates a public GitHub repository containing an Environment configuration file with a hardcoded password, providing an attacker with a high-value secret.

• External GRC Assessment: This capability provides an "outside-in" evaluation of the compliance posture by mapping exposed assets and digital risks directly to relevant GRC frameworks such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, and NIST CSF.

• Example: ThreatNG flags a missing DMARC record (identified via Domain Record Analysis) and maps it to a specific control failure within the NIST CSF framework, highlighting an externally exposed compliance gap.

Intelligence Repositories and Reporting

• Intelligence Repositories (DarCache): The repositories provide crucial context for discovered external risks:

• Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): This links discovered technologies and services to known vulnerabilities, integrating NVD, KEV, and EPSS data to help prioritize which externally facing assets are most likely to be exploited.

• Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): This confirms if any externally discovered credentials, such as a username or API key, have already been found in dark web dumps, instantly validating an external threat.

• Reporting: ThreatNG generates essential outputs of the external assessment, including Security Ratings (A-F), Executive and Technical reports, and reports prioritized by risk level (High, Medium, Low). This facilitates efficient decision-making and resource allocation to address the most critical external findings.

Complementary Solutions

Other security tools can leverage ThreatNG's external assessment findings:

• Vulnerability and Risk Management (VRM) Platforms: ThreatNG identifies a high-risk, externally facing vulnerability (e.g., a KEV vulnerability on an exposed server). This finding can be automatically sent to an internal VRM platform. The VRM can then use the external validation to override internal scoring and ensure the vulnerability is prioritized for immediate patching.

• Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Platforms: When ThreatNG discovers a leaked AWS Access Key ID in a public code repository, the high-certainty intelligence can be fed to a SOAR platform. The SOAR platform can automatically use this external assessment result to trigger a playbook that revokes the key in the AWS IAM system and opens a high-priority ticket with the DevOps team.

• Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) Tools: ThreatNG identifies an exposed, publicly accessible cloud bucket in Microsoft Azure. This external finding can be shared with a CSPM tool, which can then use this context to perform an immediate, authenticated internal check on the specific bucket and enforce the correct privacy policy.