External Attack Surface GRC

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Written By Threat NG Staff

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.

External Attack Surface GRC (EAS GRC). It provides a continuous, outside-in evaluation of an organization's GRC posture by identifying exposed assets, critical vulnerabilities, and digital risks from the perspective of an unauthenticated attacker, mapping these findings directly to relevant GRC frameworks. This capability enables organizations to proactively uncover and address external security and compliance gaps, thereby strengthening their overall GRC standing.

ThreatNG's Role in EAS GRC

1. External Discovery: ThreatNG's ability to perform purely external unauthenticated discovery using no connectors is crucial for EAS GRC. 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 EAS GRC, 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, a core component of effective cybersecurity governance.

  • EAS GRC Example: An EAS GRC team mandates a complete inventory of all public-facing assets. ThreatNG discovers an old, forgotten subdomain hosting an outdated application that was not in the internal asset register. This highlights a governance gap (a lack of complete asset control) and a significant risk, which the EAS GRC team must address to ensure that all assets are under proper governance and control.

2. External Assessment: ThreatNG conducts a wide range of external assessments that directly inform EAS GRC evaluations by highlighting potential risks and compliance issues.

  • 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, substantiated by external attack surface and digital risk intelligence, including Domain Intelligence.

    • EAS GRC Example: ThreatNG identifies an exposed administrative interface of a public-facing web application with weak authentication. This directly impacts compliance with secure coding standards and represents a significant risk to data confidentiality and integrity. The EAS GRC team would then mandate immediate remediation and a review of web application security policies.

  • Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility:

    • How ThreatNG Helps: ThreatNG evaluates subdomain takeover susceptibility by analyzing a website's subdomains, DNS records, SSL certificate statuses, and other relevant factors using external attack surface and digital risk intelligence that incorporates Domain Intelligence.

    • EAS GRC Example: ThreatNG discovers an orphaned DNS record pointing to a de-provisioned cloud service, making a critical subdomain susceptible to takeover. The EAS GRC team would identify this as a significant risk (potential for reputational damage and phishing vector) and a governance failure (poor asset de-provisioning process), requiring immediate DNS record cleanup and policy updates to ensure compliance.

  • BEC & Phishing Susceptibility:

    • How ThreatNG Helps: This is derived from Sentiment and Financial Findings, Domain Intelligence (including DNS Intelligence capabilities such as domain name permutations and Web3 Domains that are available and taken), and Email Intelligence that provides email security presence and format prediction, as well as dark web presence (Compromised Credentials).

    • EAS GRC Example: ThreatNG flags a high number of harvested organizational emails on the dark web and identifies weak DMARC, SPF, or DKIM records through its Email Intelligence capabilities. This directly impacts compliance with email security best practices and signals a high risk of successful phishing campaigns, which could lead to data breaches and regulatory non-compliance. The EAS GRC team would then enforce stronger email authentication policies and user security awareness training.

  • Brand Damage Susceptibility:

    • How ThreatNG Helps: 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).

    • EAS GRC Example: ThreatNG detects multiple instances of brand impersonation on newly registered domain permutations. This is an EAS GRC concern related to brand protection and reputation management, necessitating legal action or domain acquisition to mitigate risk and ensure compliance with brand protection policies.

  • 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).

    • EAS GRC Example: ThreatNG reveals an open AWS S3 bucket containing sensitive customer data. This is a severe compliance violation and a significant data breach risk, demanding immediate EAS GRC intervention to secure the bucket and report the incident if necessary, ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations.

  • Cyber Risk Exposure:

    • How ThreatNG Helps: ThreatNG considers parameters from its Domain Intelligence module, including certificates, subdomain headers, vulnerabilities, and sensitive ports, to determine cyber risk exposure. Code Secret Exposure is factored into the score as it discovers code repositories and their exposure level and investigates their contents for sensitive data. Cloud and SaaS Exposure evaluates cloud services and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. Additionally, the score takes into account the organization's compromised credentials on the dark web, which increases the risk of successful attacks.

    • EAS GRC Example: ThreatNG identifies a publicly exposed database with an open sensitive port and a critical CVE. This directly maps to a high-severity risk in the EAS GRC framework, requiring an immediate patch and the implementation of a firewall rule to reduce the attack surface and maintain compliance with vulnerability management policies.

  • ESG Exposure:

    • How ThreatNG Helps: ThreatNG rates the organization based on the discovery of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) violations through its external attack surface and digital risk intelligence findings. It analyzes areas such as Competition, Consumer, Employment, Environment, Financial, Government Contracting, Healthcare, and Safety-related offenses.

    • EAS GRC Example: ThreatNG identifies publicly available legal filings or negative news related to an environmental violation by a subsidiary. This directly flags an ESG compliance and reputational risk that the EAS GRC team must monitor and potentially address in their public disclosures, ensuring compliance with evolving ESG reporting requirements.

  • Supply Chain & Third Party Exposure:

    • How ThreatNG Helps: Derived from Domain Intelligence (Enumeration of Vendor Technologies from DNS and Subdomains), Technology Stack, and Cloud and SaaS Exposure.

    • EAS GRC Example: ThreatNG discovers that a critical third-party vendor used by the organization has a publicly exposed, unpatched server. This immediately flags a third-party risk within the EAS GRC framework, prompting the organization to reassess the vendor's security posture and potentially re-evaluate the partnership based on compliance requirements and supply chain risk management policies.

  • 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, ransomware events, and gang activity), and sentiment and financials (SEC Form 8-Ks).

    • EAS GRC Example: ThreatNG detects that the organization has many compromised credentials on the dark web and identifies recent ransomware gang activity targeting similar organizations. This high susceptibility directly informs the EAS GRC team's incident response planning and mandates increased investment in preventative controls, reflecting risk management best practices and compliance with incident preparedness mandates.

  • Mobile App Exposure:

    • How ThreatNG Helps: ThreatNG evaluates the exposure of an organization’s mobile apps through their discovery in marketplaces and by analyzing their content for access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers.

    • EAS GRC Example: ThreatNG identifies an organization's mobile app in a public marketplace that contains hardcoded API keys. This is a severe security flaw and a non-compliance issue with secure application development policies, requiring the EAS GRC team to enforce code reviews and secure coding practices across their mobile development lifecycle.

  • Positive Security Indicators:

    • How ThreatNG Helps: ThreatNG identifies and highlights an organization's security strengths, detecting 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.

    • EAS GRC Example: ThreatNG confirms that a Web Application Firewall (WAF) is effectively mitigating common web attack vectors for a critical application. This provides positive assurance for EAS GRC reporting, demonstrating the effectiveness of implemented controls and supporting compliance with application security requirements.

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 (e.g., PCI DSS). These reports are essential for EAS GRC teams to communicate findings to stakeholders, prioritize remediation efforts, and demonstrate compliance with specific frameworks.

  • How ThreatNG Helps: The ability to map findings directly to GRC frameworks, such as PCI DSS, significantly streamlines the assessment process and provides clear, actionable insights for compliance. The prioritized reports help EAS GRC teams allocate resources effectively by focusing on the most critical risks.

  • EAS GRC Example: An EAS GRC manager needs to report on the organization's PCI DSS compliance status. ThreatNG's "External GRC Assessment Mappings (eg, PCI DSS)" report directly highlights any external non-compliance issues, such as an exposed sensitive port. This allows the manager to quickly present specific compliance gaps and remediation plans to auditors and senior management.

4. Continuous Monitoring: ThreatNG provides continuous monitoring of the external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings of all organizations.

  • How ThreatNG Helps: For EAS GRC, continuous monitoring is critical because the threat landscape and an organization's attack surface are constantly evolving. This ensures that any new vulnerabilities or compliance gaps are identified promptly, allowing for continuous adherence to EAS GRC requirements rather than relying solely on point-in-time assessments.

  • EAS GRC Example: A development team inadvertently exposes a testing environment to the internet overnight. ThreatNG's continuous monitoring immediately detects this new asset and any associated vulnerabilities, allowing the EAS GRC team to respond swiftly before it becomes a significant incident or audit finding, thus preventing compliance breaches and ensuring ongoing adherence to security policies.

5. Investigation Modules: ThreatNG's investigation modules offer deep insights into various aspects of an organization's external posture, which are invaluable for EAS GRC teams to understand the root cause of risks and address them effectively.

  • 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.

    • EAS GRC Example: An EAS GRC team reviewing a potential phishing susceptibility flag uses Domain Intelligence's DNS Intelligence and Email Intelligence. They discover misconfigured SPF records and multiple "sister" domains (domain permutations) registered by malicious actors. This detailed insight allows the EAS GRC team to mandate immediate DNS record correction and initiate legal action against the malicious domains, strengthening governance over digital brand assets.

  • 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.

    • EAS GRC Example: ThreatNG's Code Repository Exposure module reveals hardcoded AWS Access Key IDs in a public GitHub repository. This is a critical EAS GRC finding that violates secure development policies and could lead to unauthorized access to cloud resources. The EAS GRC team would then enforce secret management policies and conduct a full review of all public code, ensuring compliance with data security and access control regulations.

  • 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, ServiceNow, and Zoom.

    • EAS GRC Example: ThreatNG discovers an unsanctioned SaaS application being used by a department or an open S3 bucket on a public cloud provider. This is a direct EAS GRC concern related to shadow IT and data protection, prompting the EAS GRC team to enforce cloud governance policies and data access controls, ensuring compliance with data residency and privacy requirements.

  • Dark Web Presence:

    • How ThreatNG Helps: Identifies organizational mentions of Related or Defined People, Places, or Things, Associated Ransomware Events, and Associated Compromised Credentials.

    • EAS GRC Example: ThreatNG identifies a significant number of compromised employee credentials or mentions of the organization by ransomware gangs on the dark web. This information is critical for the EAS GRC team's risk assessment, triggering an immediate review of internal security controls and potentially mandating multi-factor authentication across the organization to comply with security best practices and prevent account takeovers.

6. Intelligence Repositories (DarCache): Contextualizing EAS GRC Risks ThreatNG's continuously updated intelligence repositories, branded as DarCache, provide critical context for EAS GRC risk assessments.

  • 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 EAS GRC of real-world threats and potential breaches, enabling proactive measures and compliance with breach reporting requirements.

    • EAS GRC Example: If ThreatNG's DarCache Dark Web and DarCache Ransomware indicate a surge in activity by a ransomware group known to exploit a specific vulnerability the organization has (as identified by ThreatNG's assessments), the EAS GRC team can immediately escalate the risk rating of that vulnerability and prioritize its remediation, ensuring proactive risk management in line with regulatory expectations.

  • Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): Offers a comprehensive and proactive approach to managing external risks and vulnerabilities by assessing their real-world exploitability, likelihood of exploitation, and 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. This enables EAS GRC teams to make more informed security decisions and allocate resources more effectively.

    • EAS GRC Example: ThreatNG's DarCache KEV identifies that a critical vulnerability on a public-facing server (detected by ThreatNG's External Assessment) is actively being exploited in the wild. The EAS GRC team can use this intelligence to justify immediate emergency patching and resource allocation, demonstrating a strong risk response capability for audit purposes and ensuring compliance with vulnerability management policies. ThreatNG's DarCache EPSS, which indicates a high probability of exploitation for a specific CVE, prompts the EAS GRC team to prioritize patching over a CVE with a similar CVSS score but a lower EPSS, aligning risk management with real-world threat intelligence.

Complementary Solutions

ThreatNG's external focus creates powerful synergies with other internal-facing cybersecurity and GRC tools.

  • Complementary Solutions: Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Systems

    • Synergy Example: ThreatNG 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 EAS GRC team benefits from this combined view, as it provides more substantial evidence of continuous monitoring and effective incident detection, both of which are crucial for demonstrating compliance.

  • Complementary Solutions: GRC Platforms

    • Synergy Example: ThreatNG's detailed External GRC Assessment Mappings for frameworks like PCI DSS or NIST CSF can be directly imported into a dedicated GRC platform. For instance, if ThreatNG identifies a non-compliant finding (e.g., an open sensitive port violating a PCI DSS requirement), this finding automatically populates the risk register within the GRC platform, linking it to the specific control. This streamlines audit preparation, risk tracking, and compliance reporting, centralizing all GRC-related data for comprehensive oversight.

  • 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 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, ensuring that the most critical external risks are addressed first, aligning with risk mitigation strategies in EAS GRC.

  • Complementary Solutions: Identity and Access Management (IAM) Systems

    • Synergy Example: When ThreatNG's Dark Web Presence module identifies 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, directly mitigating the risk of account takeover and strengthening access controls, which are core EAS GRC components.

  • Complementary Solutions: Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Platforms

    • Synergy Example: If ThreatNG 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 legal and EAS GRC stakeholders, and potentially initiate a takedown request, automating much of the incident response process and ensuring prompt compliance actions.

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 EAS GRC standing.

Threat NG Staff
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