Proactive Compliance

In the context of cybersecurity, Proactive Compliance is a strategic and continuous approach to meeting regulatory and industry security standards by actively preventing issues rather than simply reacting to them. Unlike traditional, reactive compliance, which often involves static, point-in-time audits to check off a list of requirements, proactive compliance embeds security and compliance into an organization's daily operations.

This method operates on the principle that the most effective way to be compliant is to maintain a strong and secure posture at all times. It shifts the focus from a "what did we do?" checklist to a "what are we doing now?" mindset.

Key elements of Proactive Compliance include:

• Continuous Monitoring: Instead of relying on a single annual or quarterly audit, proactive compliance utilizes automated tools and real-time monitoring to scan for vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and policy violations continuously. This ensures that security gaps are identified and addressed as soon as they appear, preventing them from being exploited by an attacker.

• Risk-Based Prioritization: This approach does not treat all compliance requirements equally. It prioritizes actions based on the level of risk they pose to the organization. For example, a system with a critical, internet-facing vulnerability is addressed immediately because it represents a high risk, even if it is technically compliant on paper.

• Integration with Security Operations: Proactive compliance is woven into the fabric of an organization's security operations. Security teams and IT departments work together to automatically patch systems, update security policies, and enforce controls as part of their regular workflow, rather than as a separate, compliance-driven project.

• Threat Intelligence: It uses up-to-date threat intelligence to understand and anticipate new attack techniques and vulnerabilities. By knowing what attackers are currently targeting, an organization can proactively strengthen its defenses in a way that goes beyond just meeting a static set of rules. For instance, if a new zero-day vulnerability is discovered, a proactive organization will immediately check all its systems for exposure and patch them, regardless of when its next scheduled compliance audit is.

For example, a company that must comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) would not simply check a box once a year that their systems are segmented. A proactive approach would involve continuous network monitoring to automatically detect and alert on any new, unauthorized connections to the cardholder data environment, ensuring that segmentation controls are always in place and functioning correctly.

ThreatNG helps organizations with Proactive Compliance by continuously assessing their external attack surface and digital risks from an attacker's point of view, which moves beyond static, point-in-time audits. The solution's capabilities enable a company to identify and mitigate compliance-related vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.

External Discovery & Assessment

ThreatNG uses purely external, unauthenticated discovery to map an organization's digital footprint. This process identifies all internet-facing assets, including those that may be unknown to the organization, such as forgotten subdomains or unauthorized cloud services. This proactive search mirrors how a malicious actor would gather intelligence to find an entry point.

ThreatNG's External Assessment provides a variety of scores that highlight specific compliance risks:

• Non-Human Identity (NHI) Exposure: This score evaluates risks associated with API keys and service accounts. From a proactive compliance perspective, this helps a company manage and mitigate a significant attack vector that often exceeds the number of human identities and is frequently mismanaged. For example, ThreatNG can identify an exposed API key in a public code repository, which poses a clear security and compliance risk, necessitating immediate action.

• Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This score is based on factors such as exposed sensitive ports, known vulnerabilities, and compromised credentials identified on the dark web. This helps a company proactively defend against a ransomware attack that would result in a significant data breach and regulatory non-compliance.

External GRC Assessment

ThreatNG's External GRC Assessment is a key feature for proactive compliance. It provides a continuous, outside-in evaluation of an organization's Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) posture. The platform maps its findings—such as exposed assets and critical vulnerabilities—directly to relevant frameworks like PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, and POPIA. This enables organizations to proactively identify and address external security and compliance gaps before they result in an audit failure or breach.

For example, to help with HIPAA compliance, ThreatNG can identify a publicly accessible cloud bucket that contains sensitive patient information. This is a direct compliance violation that the organization can address immediately, rather than waiting for an annual audit.

Continuous Monitoring, Reporting, and Investigation Modules

Continuous monitoring is a core component of proactive compliance, and ThreatNG provides this for an organization's external attack surface and digital risk. This ensures that new vulnerabilities or assets are identified in real-time, preventing the kind of security gaps that can emerge between traditional audits.

The platform's reporting capabilities, including Executive, Technical, and Prioritized reports, provide the actionable information needed to drive proactive security efforts. These reports include a Risk level, Reasoning, and Recommendations to help organizations prioritize their security efforts and allocate resources effectively.

ThreatNG's Investigation Modules are crucial for proactive compliance, enabling in-depth analysis of specific risks and threats. For instance, the Sensitive Code Exposure module discovers public code repositories that contain sensitive data like credentials and API keys. This helps to address a significant source of compliance violations that often arise from developer errors. Another example is the Search Engine Exploitation module, which allows users to investigate their susceptibility to exposing sensitive information, such as privileged folders or public passwords, via search engines, enabling them to remove this data proactively.

Intelligence Repositories & Complementary Solutions

ThreatNG's DarCache intelligence repositories are vital for a proactive approach by providing continuously updated threat intelligence. For example, the DarCache Vulnerability repository goes beyond basic CVE information from the NVD by including EPSS data, which provides a probabilistic estimate of a vulnerability being exploited. It also consists of the KEV catalog of vulnerabilities that are actively exploited in the wild. This allows an organization to proactively prioritize remediation efforts on vulnerabilities that pose an immediate and proven threat.

ThreatNG's findings can be combined with complementary solutions to create a more robust security posture. For example, the information ThreatNG collects about external vulnerabilities could be used by an internal vulnerability management platform to get a complete picture of an organization's vulnerabilities. The synergy between these solutions provides a full view of the risks—both external and internal. Another example would be integrating ThreatNG's data on exposed sensitive information with a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solution, allowing the DLP system to be configured to prevent similar data from being exfiltrated from the internal network in the future.