External Control Gap
An External Control Gap, in the context of cybersecurity and risk management, refers to a lack of adequate security measures, policies, or visibility on an organization's public-facing digital assets. It is the discrepancy between the security posture an organization thinks it has and the exposed reality an external, unauthenticated adversary sees.
This gap on the perimeter of the organization's digital attack surface provides an exploitable path for initial access or data exfiltration.
Characteristics of an External Control Gap:
Lack of Visibility: The primary cause is an incomplete inventory of external assets. This includes forgotten subdomains, misconfigured cloud storage repositories, exposed development environments, or mobile applications deployed to marketplaces unknown to the central security team. If an asset is not known, it cannot be secured, creating a control gap.
Focus on Internal Defenses: Organizations often invest heavily in internal, network-centric security tools (like firewalls and endpoint security) that require internal deployment and authentication. These tools are inherently blind to external configuration errors or vulnerabilities that do not require network access, such as:
Missing Security Headers: A public-facing web application is missing key security headers like HSTS or Content-Security-Policy.
Exposed Credentials: Secrets or access keys inadvertently published in a public code repository.
Unclaimed Services: A dangling DNS record pointing a subdomain to an external service that has been retired but not properly decommissioned.
Misalignment with Threat Reality: The control gap is defined by the difference between defensive measures and an attacker's strategy. An attacker does not look for internal vulnerabilities first; they probe the external surface for the easiest unauthenticated entry point. When an organization's controls fail to meet this external threat, the gap becomes a high-priority risk.
Configuration Error as a Vulnerability: The gap often stems from human configuration errors rather than complex software vulnerabilities. An improperly set permission on a cloud bucket, or a forgotten DNS entry, is a control gap that bypasses firewalls and traditional perimeter defenses, enabling an immediate breach.
Closing an External Control Gap requires adopting an adversarial, outside-in perspective and implementing continuous monitoring of the entire public-facing attack surface.
ThreatNG is a specialized, comprehensive solution that directly addresses and closes the External Control Gap by adopting the adversarial, unauthenticated perspective. It systematically identifies the "unknown unknowns"—the assets and misconfigurations outside the formal security perimeter—and provides the verifiable evidence needed to implement or fix security controls.
External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG’s foundational capabilities eliminate the primary cause of the External Control Gap: lack of visibility.
External Discovery: The platform performs purely external, unauthenticated discovery using no internal connectors or agents. This process proactively maps the entire digital footprint, precisely as an attacker would perceive it. This discovers assets that internal tools might miss due to limited scope or outdated inventories.
Example of Discovery: ThreatNG continuously maps the entire external digital footprint, discovering forgotten subdomains, exposed cloud buckets, and unknown web applications that fall outside the organization’s formal asset register, thereby identifying Shadow IT that creates the gap.
Continuous Monitoring: ThreatNG continuously monitors the external attack surface. This ensures that, as an organization's digital footprint changes (e.g., a new asset is deployed, a misconfiguration occurs, or a third-party change introduces a vulnerability), the External Control Gap is immediately detected and reported in real time.
External Assessment
ThreatNG’s assessments quantify the severity of the control gap and provide the objective evidence required for decisive action.
Cyber Risk Exposure Security Rating: This rating is based on findings like Certificates (specifically invalid certificates), Cloud Exposure (exposed open cloud buckets), Sensitive Code Discovery and Exposure (code secret exposure), and Subdomains intelligence (exposed ports, private IPs). These findings are direct indicators of missing or failed external controls.
Example of Assessment: ThreatNG could assess an organization and identify an Exposed Port (e.g., an open database port) on a known subdomain, which represents an immediate control gap allowing unauthenticated network access.
Data Leak Susceptibility Security Rating: This rating is derived from identifying external digital risks, including Cloud Exposure (specifically exposed open cloud buckets) and Compromised Credentials. The presence of an open cloud bucket is a severe External Control Gap, as it allows unauthenticated data exfiltration.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: The core of this check is finding a dangling DNS record. This is a critical control gap in asset decommissioning. ThreatNG performs a specific validation check to determine whether a CNAME record pointing to an external vendor (such as Heroku or Shopify) currently points to an inactive or unclaimed resource, confirming the exploitable gap.
Investigation Modules
ThreatNG's investigation modules provide the detailed findings that help security teams understand the location and nature of the control gap.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: This module is dedicated to identifying control gaps in cloud usage and discovering Unsanctioned Cloud Services and Openly Exposed Cloud Buckets across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. This eliminates the blind spot caused by decentralized or shadow cloud deployments.
Sensitive Code Exposure: This module closes the control gap of securing secrets. It discovers public code repositories and uncovers risks such as leaked Access Credentials (e.g., Stripe API Key, AWS Access Key ID) and Security Credentials (e.g., PGP private key blocks). This shows where external control over code and secrets has failed.
External Adversary View: This module aligns the organization’s security posture with external threats, mapping exposures directly to MITRE ATT&CK techniques. This helps translate the External Control Gap (e.g., an open port) into the adversary's potential intent (e.g., Initial Access or Lateral Movement).
Intelligence Repositories
ThreatNG’s repositories provide the critical context to understand the exploitability and impact of the control gaps.
Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): This combines NVD data with intelligence from KEV (actively exploited vulnerabilities) and EPSS (exploitation likelihood). This context determines whether a technical flaw found in an externally facing asset constitutes an immediate control gapbeing exploited in the wild.
Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): The discovery of an organization’s compromised credentials on the dark web immediately signals a high-priority External Control Gap in identity and access management controls, providing the necessary evidence for an immediate response.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's external evidence and continuous perspective can be used with internal systems to enforce a unified security posture, eliminating the External Control Gap.
Working with Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Platforms: ThreatNG’s External GRC Assessment provides continuous, outside-in findings, mapped to frameworks such as PCI DSS and NIST CSF. These verifiable findings (e.g., an exposed cloud bucket violates PCI data access controls) can be automatically fed into a GRC Platform to ensure that compliance reports reflect the real, external security control gaps, preventing the Compliant-Yet-Vulnerable Paradox.
Working with Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs): ThreatNG’s External Discovery and assessment results for forgotten or unknown assets can be used to automatically update a CMDB. For instance, the discovery of a rogue, unmonitored server via IP Intelligence should trigger an update to the CMDB to track the asset and assign immediate ownership to secure the control gap.
