Risk Flexible
In cybersecurity, a Risk Flexible approach means an organization is willing to take on a higher level of cyber risk when there is a clear strategic advantage, significant innovation, or substantial business opportunity. This approach is characterized by adaptability and a readiness to modify security measures to enable business goals, provided that the risks are understood, actively managed, and there are robust capabilities to respond if something goes wrong. It's about allowing the business, even if it means venturing into areas with elevated, but calculated, cyber exposure.
Here's a detailed breakdown of what "Risk Flexible" implies in cybersecurity:
Core Characteristics of a Risk-Flexible Cybersecurity Posture:
Strategic Risk Acceptance:
Innovation Enabler: Cybersecurity is seen as an enabler of innovation and growth, rather than solely a cost center or a barrier. The security team works closely with business units to understand their objectives and find secure ways to achieve them, even if it involves embracing new, potentially riskier technologies or markets.
Calculated Opportunities: Organizations actively seek out opportunities that may have higher inherent cyber risks (e.g., rapid cloud adoption, aggressive M&A, early adoption of emerging technologies like AI/ML), but they ensure these risks are identified, assessed, and deemed acceptable in the context of the strategic reward.
Dynamic Thresholds: Risk acceptance thresholds are not rigid. They can be adjusted based on an initiative's strategic importance, potential competitive advantage, and the organization's ability to monitor and respond to the associated risks.
Emphasis on Adaptive Security and Resilience:
Agile Security Practices: Security integrates closely with agile development and DevOps methodologies, enabling rapid deployment of secure applications and infrastructure without causing significant delays.
Strong Detection and Response: Given the willingness to accept higher inherent risks, there's a paramount focus on advanced detection capabilities (e.g., sophisticated threat intelligence, behavioral analytics, advanced EDR/XDR) and rapid, automated incident response. The mindset shifts from "prevent everything" to "detect fast, respond effectively, and recover quickly."
Continuous Learning and Improvement: The organization learns from every incident, near-miss, or new threat, quickly adapting its defenses and strategies. This includes regular "red team/blue team" exercises and simulations to refine capabilities.
Advanced Threat Intelligence and Proactive Defense:
Contextual Intelligence: Uses precise and actionable threat intelligence to understand the adversary's tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) relevant to their evolving attack surface.
Proactive Hunt: Actively hunts for threats within their environment based on intelligence, rather than waiting for alerts.
Security by Design and Automation: This approach incorporates security from the earliest stages of design (security by design/DevSecOps) and heavily uses automation for security checks, configurations, and responses to maintain speed and scale.
Empowered and Collaborative Security Team:
Business Aligned: The security team is deeply integrated with business objectives, understanding the strategic drivers for risk-taking and working as partners, not gatekeepers.
Delegated Authority: Security personnel may have more delegated authority to make real-time risk decisions within defined parameters, supporting agility.
Open Communication: A culture of open communication about risks and incidents, fostering trust and continuous improvement.
Trade-offs and Potential Downsides:
Higher Inherent Risk Exposure: This approach inherently exposes the organization to more cyber risk than cautious, minimalist, or averse postures.
Significant Investment in Detection/Response: To manage the higher accepted risk, substantial investment is required in advanced security technologies, skilled personnel, and robust incident response capabilities.
Potential for Miscalculation: If risk assessments are flawed or response capabilities are insufficient, accepting too much risk can lead to significant and costly breaches.
Need for Mature Governance: A mature risk governance framework is required to ensure that "flexibility" doesn't devolve into recklessness.
Examples of Risk-Flexible Actions in Cybersecurity:
Rapidly adopting a multi-cloud strategy to gain a competitive advantage and global reach, even if it introduces complex security challenges, relying on advanced cloud security posture management and cloud workload protection platforms.
Rolling out a new customer-facing mobile application with aggressive deadlines to capture market share, while prioritizing secure API development and real-time fraud detection over delaying launch for exhaustive, long-term penetration testing cycles.
Engaging with innovative but smaller or newer third-party vendors for specialized services, even if their security track record is less established, provided they agree to stringent security clauses and undergo continuous monitoring.
Investing heavily in security automation and orchestration to enable rapid response to incidents, such as automated containment of compromised endpoints or network segments, allowing the business to recover quickly from successful attacks.
Actively experimenting with new cybersecurity technologies (e.g., AI-powered defense tools, quantum-resistant cryptography) to gain a competitive edge in security, accepting that these early adoptions carry inherent, but potentially rewarding, risks.
A risk-flexible cybersecurity approach is dynamic and opportunity-driven. It consciously embraces cyber risk to pursue strategic advantages, underpinning this acceptance with robust and adaptive detection, response, and recovery capabilities.
ThreatNG, an all-in-one external attack surface management, digital risk protection, and security ratings solution, is well-equipped to assist organizations with a Risk-Flexible cybersecurity posture. It supports this approach by providing the comprehensive external visibility and actionable intelligence needed to confidently pursue strategic opportunities while actively understanding and managing the associated cyber risks. ThreatNG's capabilities enable organizations to identify, assess, and quickly respond to threats, aligning with a flexible posture that prioritizes detection, response, and rapid recovery over absolute prevention.
External Discovery ThreatNG performs purely external, unauthenticated discovery without the need for connectors. This capability is vital for a risk-flexible organization because it quickly and efficiently maps the entire external attack surface from an attacker's perspective. This allows the organization to pursue new initiatives, such as rapid cloud adoption or engaging with new digital platforms, while simultaneously understanding the latest attack vectors these changes might introduce. For example, ThreatNG can discover newly deployed, internet-facing servers or shadow IT instances that were spun up quickly to meet a business need, enabling the security team to assess and manage these quickly introduced exposures rather than being surprised by them.
External Assessment ThreatNG offers various external assessment ratings that provide the detailed and adaptive insights a risk-flexible organization requires to make informed decisions about pursuing opportunities with higher inherent risk.
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: This score is substantiated by analyzing externally accessible parts of a web application to identify potential entry points for attackers. A risk-flexible organization would use this to quickly assess the security posture of newly launched web applications, allowing them to proceed with deployment while understanding specific vulnerabilities that require immediate attention or compensatory controls.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: ThreatNG evaluates this by incorporating Domain Intelligence, which includes analysis of subdomains, DNS records, and SSL certificate statuses. For an organization that is flexible with risk, this assessment helps them confidently launch numerous new subdomains for marketing campaigns or experimental projects, knowing that ThreatNG will identify potential takeover risks so they can be swiftly addressed.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This rating is derived from Sentiment and Financials Findings, Domain Intelligence (including DNS Intelligence capabilities like Domain Name Permutations and Web3 Domains, and Email Intelligence), and Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials). Risk-flexible organizations can leverage this to understand their susceptibility to social engineering campaigns. For instance, if pursuing aggressive marketing through new email channels, ThreatNG helps them monitor for related phishing threats and quickly adapt their defenses.
Brand Damage Susceptibility: Derived from attack surface intelligence, digital risk intelligence, ESG Violations, Sentiment and Financials (Lawsuits, SEC filings, 8-Ks, Negative News), and Domain Intelligence (Domain Name Permutations and Web3 Domains). This assessment allows a risk-flexible organization to pursue bold public relations or market expansion strategies while continuously monitoring for adverse information that could lead to reputational damage, enabling a quick response.
Data Leak Susceptibility: This is derived from external attack surface and digital risk intelligence based on Cloud and SaaS Exposure, Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials), Domain Intelligence, and Sentiment and Financials. For organizations rapidly adopting new cloud services or SaaS solutions to gain business agility, this assessment is critical for identifying unintended data exposures in real-time, allowing for immediate remediation without halting innovation.
Cyber Risk Exposure: This considers parameters from the Domain Intelligence module, including certificates, subdomain headers, vulnerabilities, and sensitive ports, factoring in Code Secret Exposure. Cloud and SaaS Exposure and compromised credentials on the dark web are also considered. This provides a holistic view of external cyber risks, allowing a flexible organization to understand the overall risk profile of new digital ventures and allocate resources efficiently to manage high-impact exposures.
ESG Exposure: ThreatNG rates based on discovered environmental, social, and governance (ESG) violations through its external attack surface and digital risk intelligence findings. It analyzes and highlights Competition, Consumer, Employment, Environment, Financial, Government Contracting, Healthcare, and Safety-related offenses. For a risk-flexible organization, this helps balance rapid growth or expansion with maintaining social license and avoiding compliance pitfalls, enabling proactive adjustments to strategy.
Supply Chain & Third Party Exposure: Derived from Domain Intelligence (Enumeration of Vendor Technologies from DNS and Subdomains), Technology Stack, and Cloud and SaaS Exposure. Organizations with a flexible risk appetite might rapidly onboard new third-party vendors to seize market opportunities. This assessment helps them quickly understand and manage the security posture of these new supply chain components, enabling swift, data-driven decisions on acceptable risk.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This is calculated based on external attack surface and digital risk intelligence, which includes domain intelligence (exposed sensitive ports, private IPs, and known vulnerabilities), dark web presence (compromised credentials and ransomware events and gang activity), and sentiment and financials (SEC Form 8-Ks). A risk-flexible organization can use this to gauge the probability of high-impact events for new initiatives, ensuring that even when accepting higher risk, they have a clear understanding of breach and ransomware susceptibility and can prioritize advanced detection and response mechanisms.
Mobile App Exposure: ThreatNG evaluates how exposed an organization’s mobile apps are through discovery in marketplaces and for the presence of Access Credentials, Security Credentials, and Platform-Specific Identifiers within them. For an organization rapidly deploying mobile applications to enhance customer engagement, this assessment allows them to quickly identify and address hardcoded credentials or sensitive data exposures, maintaining agility while managing critical risks.
Positive Security Indicators ThreatNG identifies and highlights an organization's security strengths, detecting the presence of beneficial security controls and configurations like Web Application Firewalls or multi-factor authentication. It validates these positive measures from an external attacker's perspective. For a risk-flexible organization, this provides objective evidence that their strategic security investments are effective, allowing them to push boundaries in other areas confidently. It offers a balanced and comprehensive view of the organization's security posture.
Reporting ThreatNG provides various reporting options, including Executive, Technical, Prioritized (High, Medium, Low, and Informational), Security Ratings, Inventory, Ransomware Susceptibility, and U.S. SEC Filings. The prioritized reporting is particularly valuable for a risk-flexible organization, as it lets them quickly focus on the most critical risks that demand immediate attention, optimizing resource allocation while pursuing fast-paced initiatives. This ensures security efforts are always aligned with the highest impact threats.
Continuous Monitoring ThreatNG offers continuous monitoring of all organizations' external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings. This constant vigilance is crucial for a risk-flexible organization. As new technologies are adopted or business strategies shift rapidly, continuous monitoring immediately identifies new vulnerabilities or changes in the external threat landscape. This enables agile adjustments to security controls and rapid response, preventing escalating risks from derailing strategic initiatives.
Investigation Modules ThreatNG's investigation modules offer detailed insights, providing the depth of information a risk-flexible organization needs to quickly understand and triage specific threats associated with their dynamic environment.
Domain Intelligence: This includes a Domain Overview (Digital Presence Word Cloud, Microsoft Entra Identification, Bug Bounty Programs, SwaggerHub instances), DNS Intelligence (Domain Record Analysis, IP Identification, Vendors and Technology Identification, Domain Name Permutations, Web3 Domains), Email Intelligence (Security Presence like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records, Format Predictions, Harvested Emails), WHOIS Intelligence, and Subdomain Intelligence (HTTP Responses, Header Analysis, Server Headers, Cloud Hosting, E-commerce Platforms, Content Management Systems, Code Repositories, Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility, and Content Identification).
Example of ThreatNG helping: If a flexible organization launches a new digital campaign involving numerous new subdomains, Subdomain Intelligence can quickly identify misconfigured subdomains susceptible to takeover. This allows them to fix the issue rapidly, minimizing potential reputational damage or use for phishing.
Sensitive Code Exposure: This discovers public code repositories and their exposure level, investigating for sensitive data such as Access Credentials (API Keys, Access Tokens, Generic Credentials, Cloud Credentials), Security Credentials (Cryptographic Keys), 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.
Example of ThreatNG helping: A flexible organization pushing rapid software development might unintentionally expose sensitive API keys in public code repositories. ThreatNG's Sensitive Code Exposure module would flag these immediately, allowing the development team to revoke keys and implement automated scanning within their CI/CD pipeline to prevent future occurrences, thus maintaining agility without sacrificing critical security.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: This identifies Sanctioned Cloud Services, Unsanctioned Cloud Services, Cloud Service Impersonations, and Open Exposed Cloud Buckets across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. It also lists various SaaS implementations associated with the organization.
Example of ThreatNG helping: If an organization rapidly adopts a new SaaS solution for a specific business need, Cloud and SaaS Exposure can immediately identify if this new service is exposing sensitive data or is improperly configured, allowing the security team to apply targeted controls without hindering the business's ability to use the tool.
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache) ThreatNG's continuously updated intelligence repositories (DarCache) provide the timely and contextual threat intelligence essential for a risk-flexible organization to make informed decisions and adapt its defenses quickly.
Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): This repository contains compromised credentials. A flexible organization can use it to monitor for its employees' compromised credentials appearing on the dark web. This enables rapid password resets and multi-factor authentication enforcement, mitigating a common initial access vector for attackers.
Ransomware Groups and Activities (DarCache Ransomware): This tracker tracks over 70 Ransomware Gangs. This allows a flexible organization to stay abreast of the latest ransomware TTPs, informing its defensive strategies and ensuring its incident response plans are ready for emerging threats, even as it takes on new digital risks.
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 comprises:
NVD (DarCache NVD): Offers a deep understanding of each vulnerability's technical characteristics and potential impact.
EPSS (DarCache EPSS): Provides a probabilistic estimate of the likelihood of exploitation soon. Combining EPSS with other vulnerability data allows for a more forward-looking approach to prioritization, addressing vulnerabilities that are not just severe but also likely to be weaponized. A flexible organization uses EPSS to prioritize patching only the most critical and actively exploitable vulnerabilities, optimizing their patching cycles to match their agile development and deployment pace.
KEV (DarCache KEV): Identifies vulnerabilities actively exploited in the wild with critical context for prioritizing remediation efforts. This is crucial for a flexible organization to quickly address immediate and proven threats that could impact their rapidly changing environment.
Verified Proof-of-Concept (PoC) Exploits (DarCache eXploit): Direct links to PoC exploits accelerate understanding how a vulnerability can be exploited. This information is invaluable for security teams to reproduce vulnerabilities, assess real-world impact, and develop effective mitigation strategies, allowing for rapid, targeted responses to critical exposures.
Complementary Solutions ThreatNG's external insights can be powerfully synergized with other cybersecurity solutions, reinforcing a risk-flexible organization's ability to innovate and adapt securely.
ThreatNG and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Platforms: ThreatNG provides external attack surface and threat intelligence, while XDR collects and correlates data across multiple security layers (endpoints, network, cloud, identity).
Example of ThreatNG helping: ThreatNG identifies a new, actively exploited vulnerability (via DarCache KEV) on an organization's public-facing API gateway.
Example of ThreatNG and complementary solutions: The XDR platform can ingest external threat intelligence from ThreatNG. The XDR then automatically enhances its detection rules for exploitation attempts targeting that specific vulnerability. It can even trigger automated responses like temporarily blocking suspicious IP addresses attempting to exploit it, ensuring real-time adaptive defense.
ThreatNG and Security Analytics Platforms: ThreatNG's comprehensive assessment data and continuous monitoring insights can enrich the data analyzed by security analytics platforms.
Example of ThreatNG helping: ThreatNG flags an increase in exposed sensitive ports and services on the organization's external attack surface due to the rapid deployment of new infrastructure.
Example of ThreatNG and complementary solutions: A security analytics platform can use this external context from ThreatNG to prioritize alerts from internal network logs related to those newly exposed services, helping the security team focus on potential internal exploitation attempts related to the expanded external footprint.
ThreatNG and Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP): ThreatNG identifies externally cloud and SaaS exposures and misconfigurations. CWPPs provide deep runtime protection and configuration management for cloud workloads.
Example of ThreatNG helping: ThreatNG discovers a publicly accessible S3 bucket with read/write permissions due to a recent agile deployment.
Example of ThreatNG and complementary solutions: This external finding from ThreatNG can trigger an alert in the CWPP, which can then automatically enforce stricter access policies on the S3 bucket, or even quarantine the associated cloud resource until the misconfiguration is resolved, ensuring immediate remediation of externally identified cloud risks.
ThreatNG and Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Tools: ThreatNG's various susceptibility ratings and reporting capabilities can feed into GRC platforms.
Example of ThreatNG helping: ThreatNG provides a clear rating for Brand Damage Susceptibility, showing an increase due to negative news mentions and potential regulatory violations.
Example of ThreatNG and complementary solutions: This data from ThreatNG can be integrated into the GRC tool, providing real-time external risk posture updates that inform compliance reporting and enable leadership to make rapid, informed decisions about accepting or mitigating risks in line with the organization's flexible appetite.
