Visibility Chasm

The Visibility Chasm in cybersecurity refers to the critical and growing gap between the digital assets an organization knows about and manages and the sprawling, actual infrastructure that exists on the public internet.

It represents the disconnect between the "theoretical" attack surface—documented in spreadsheets, Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs), and asset inventories—and the "real" attack surface that adversaries can see, scan, and exploit. This chasm is where most modern cyberattacks originate, as threat actors target unmonitored, unpatched assets that fall into this blind spot.

The Dynamics of the Chasm

The Visibility Chasm is created by two conflicting views of the network.

• The Internal View (The Known): This includes managed devices, sanctioned cloud instances, and approved software that the IT team monitors using internal agents and firewalls. This view is often static and incomplete.

• The External View (The Unknown): This is the attacker's perspective. It includes everything that resolves to the organization's domain, including forgotten development servers, "Shadow IT" SaaS accounts, third-party marketing microsites, and orphaned cloud buckets.

Drivers of the Visibility Chasm

Several modern operational trends have widened this gap, making it the primary challenge for security leaders.

• Rapid Cloud Adoption: The ease of provisioning cloud resources (AWS, Azure, GCP) enables developers and business units to create infrastructure in minutes without involving central IT procurement. These assets often lack standard security controls and are never added to the central inventory.

• Shadow IT and SaaS: Departments like Marketing or HR often purchase their own software-as-a-service solutions to move fast. These tools connect to corporate data but exist entirely outside the security team's visibility or control.

• Remote Work and BYOD: The dissolution of the traditional perimeter means assets are connecting from residential IP addresses and coffee shops, making them invisible to traditional network scanning appliances.

• Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A): When companies combine, the acquiring organization inherits significant digital debt and unknown infrastructure. The time required to inventory these new assets creates a temporary but dangerous visibility gap.

Consequences of the Chasm

Living with a Visibility Chasm creates systemic risks that traditional security tools cannot mitigate.

The "Unpatchable" Vulnerability You cannot patch a server you do not know exists. While the security team might have a 100% patch rate for known assets, a single forgotten server running an outdated Linux version can serve as the entry point for a ransomware attack.

Regulatory Non-Compliance Frameworks like GDPR, CCPA, and PCI DSS require organizations to map their data flows and secure all processing systems. Assets hidden in the visibility chasm are, by definition, non-compliant and expose the organization to massive fines if a breach originates from them.

Wasted Security Spend Organizations spend millions on Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and firewalls. However, you cannot install an EDR agent on a "Shadow" virtual machine you don't know about. The visibility chasm renders these expensive tools useless for a significant portion of the infrastructure.

Bridging the Visibility Chasm

Closing the gap requires shifting from static inventory methods to dynamic discovery.

• Continuous External Attack Surface Management (EASM): Implementing tools that continuously scan the internet for the organization's digital footprint, identifying new assets as soon as they appear.

• Seedless Discovery: Using recursive techniques to find assets based on relationships (like DNS records and SSL certificates) rather than relying on a list of known IP ranges.

• Integration with DevOps: Embedding discovery checks into the CI/CD pipeline to ensure that new code pushes and infrastructure deployments are automatically registered in the asset inventory.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Visibility Chasm the same as Shadow IT? Shadow IT is a component of the Visibility Chasm, but the chasm is broader. It also includes "Zombie IT" (abandoned assets that were once sanctioned but are now forgotten), misconfigured third-party assets, and legacy infrastructure that was never properly decommissioned.

Why do traditional asset inventories fail? Traditional inventories (CMDBs) are manual and require human intervention to update. In a modern cloud environment, assets are ephemeral—spinning up and down in hours. A manual spreadsheet becomes obsolete the moment it is saved, creating an immediate visibility gap.

How does an attacker exploit the Visibility Chasm? Attackers use automated scanners to find the "path of least resistance." They know that the main corporate website is heavily defended. Instead, they look for the assets in the chasm—like an old test server or an exposed storage bucket—because these assets are unlikely to have monitoring tools that would trigger an alarm.

Can the Visibility Chasm ever be fully closed? In a dynamic environment, it is difficult to close it 100% permanently. The goal is to narrow the chasm to the point where new assets are discovered and secured within minutes or hours, rather than remaining invisible for months or years.

ThreatNG and the Visibility Chasm

ThreatNG bridges the Visibility Chasm by acting as an "All-Seeing Eye" for the external attack surface. It systematically hunts for, identifies, and assesses digital assets outside the "Known" inventory managed by IT. By illuminating Shadow IT, forgotten cloud infrastructure, and third-party dependencies, ThreatNG converts "Unknown" risks into "Managed" assets, closing the gap where attackers typically hide.

It transforms the organization's view from a static, internal list into a dynamic, real-time map of the actual digital reality.

External Discovery: Illuminating the Blind Spots

The Visibility Chasm exists because traditional tools only see what is installed on agents. ThreatNG’s External Discovery engine closes this gap by performing "Seedless Discovery"—finding assets based on relationships and public footprints rather than internal lists.

• Discovering Shadow Infrastructure: ThreatNG recursively maps subdomains and related domains. If a marketing team spins up a microsite on a non-standard domain (e.g., campaign-2025-launch.comWithout IT approval, ThreatNG discovers it by tracing the DNS and WHOIS relationships back to the corporate entity. This moves the asset from the "Chasm" to the "Inventory."

• Cloud Bucket and Storage Discovery: Developers often leave S3 buckets or Azure Blobs open to the public for "easy access." These are invisible to internal firewalls. ThreatNG scans public cloud IP ranges and uses permutation logic to find these Exposed Open Cloud Buckets. It identifies exactly where data is leaking, revealing a massive blind spot in cloud governance.

• Code Repository Leaks: The chasm often includes code living on personal GitHub accounts. ThreatNG discovers external repositories containing corporate code or API keys, identifying where intellectual property has drifted outside the secure perimeter.

External Assessment: Judging the Unknown

Finding the asset is only the first step. To fully bridge the chasm, you must understand the risk it poses. ThreatNG’s Assessment Engine evaluates these newly discovered assets to determine if they are safe or toxic.

• Technical Assessment (Technical Resources):

  • The Chasm Scenario: A forgotten test server is running on a cloud instance. IT thinks it was decommissioned years ago.

  • ThreatNG Action: ThreatNG assesses the live server. It indicates that it is running an end-of-life Apache version with multiple critical CVEs and has port 22 (SSH) open to the internet. This assessment classifies the asset as "Critical Risk," prioritizing its immediate takedown.

• Business Context Assessment (Financial & Legal Resources):

  • The Chasm Scenario: The organization relies on a small SaaS vendor for file processing. This vendor is not in the primary procurement system.

  • ThreatNG Action: ThreatNG assesses the vendor using Financial and Legal Resources. It discovers the vendor is currently in bankruptcy proceedings and has a suspended business license. This reveals a "Business Continuity Chasm"—a critical dependency that is about to disappear, allowing the organization to migrate before the service fails.

Investigation Modules: Deep Diving into the Void

When a suspicious asset is found in the chasm, analysts need to know what it is. ThreatNG’s investigation modules provide forensic tools for safely analyzing these unknown entities.

• Domain Intelligence and Pivoting:

  • The Investigation: An unknown domain support-login-secure.com is found pointing to the corporate network.

  • ThreatNG Deep Dive: Analysts use Recursive Attribute Pivoting to investigate the registrant. They see the domain was registered 2 days ago by an email address linked to a known phishing group. This confirms the asset is not "Shadow IT" but "Hostile Infrastructure," allowing for an immediate block.

• Sanitized Dark Web Investigation:

  • The Investigation: A threat intelligence feed suggests "User Credentials" are available for the company.

  • ThreatNG Deep Dive: The Sanitized Dark Web module retrieves the actual listing from the underground market. It reveals that the credentials belong to the "DevOps" team and include access to the newly discovered cloud buckets. This links the "Dark Web" risk directly to the "Infrastructure" risk, providing a complete picture of the threat.

• Archived Web Page Investigation:

  • The Investigation: A discovered subdomain is currently returning a 404 error, but it is flagged as high risk.

  • ThreatNG Deep Dive: Analysts use the Archived Web Page module to see what the site used to host. They see a snapshot from two weeks ago showing a login panel for a sensitive internal tool. This proves the asset was active and recently exposed, warranting a forensic review of the access logs.

Continuous Monitoring: Watching the Chasm Close

The chasm is dynamic; new assets appear daily. ThreatNG’s Continuous Monitoring ensures that once the gap is closed, it stays closed.

• Drift Detection: If a developer opens a firewall port on a production server at 3:00 AM, creating a new visibility gap, ThreatNG detects this Drift immediately. It alerts the security team that the asset's posture has changed from "Secure" to "Exposed," allowing them to remediate it before an attacker scans it.

Intelligence Repositories: The Map of the Territory

ThreatNG’s Intelligence Repositories serve as the historical record of the chasm.

• Asset History: The repository stores the timeline of every discovered asset. It answers the question, "How long was this server exposed?" Showing that the asset appeared in the chasm six months ago helps the team understand the potential window of compromise.

Reporting: Communicating the Gap

ThreatNG’s Reporting module visualizes the Visibility Chasm for leadership.

• Discovery vs. Inventory Reports: These reports compare "What ThreatNG Found" vs. "What IT Knows." Highlighting the delta (e.g., "We found 20% more assets than are in the CMDB") justifies the budget for improved asset management and demonstrates the value of the EASM program.

Complementary Solutions

ThreatNG integrates with other enterprise tools to permanently bridge the Visibility Chasm by feeding them the data they lack.

Configuration Management Database (CMDB) ThreatNG populates the known universe.

• Cooperation: The CMDB is the "Source of Truth" for internal assets, but it is often incomplete. ThreatNG acts as the feeder. When ThreatNG discovers a new, valid asset (such as a new cloud load balancer), it pushes the data into the CMDB. This ensures the CMDB is automatically updated with the "Real World" view, preventing staleness.

Vulnerability Scanners (VM) ThreatNG defines the target list.

• Cooperation: Vulnerability scanners (such as Nessus or Qualys) can only scan what they are instructed to scan (e.g., IP ranges). ThreatNG provides the target list. It feeds the newly discovered, "unknown" IP addresses to the vulnerability scanner. This ensures the scanner is checking 100% of the attack surface, not just the known 80%.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) ThreatNG provides external context.

• Cooperation: SIEMs see internal traffic. ThreatNG informs the SIEM of which traffic is connecting. If an internal host connects to an IP address that ThreatNG identified as an "Exposed Cloud Bucket," the SIEM can trigger a "Data Exfiltration" alert. Without ThreatNG, the SIEM would just see a generic connection to "Amazon AWS" and likely ignore it.

Attack Surface Management (ASM) & Remediation Platforms ThreatNG triggers the fix.

• Cooperation: When ThreatNG discovers a critical exposure in the chasm (e.g., a leaking database), it triggers a ticket in the Remediation Platform (like Jira or ServiceNow). This ensures that the discovery doesn't just sit in a report; it enters the operational workflow for the IT team to fix, thereby closing the visibility gap.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does ThreatNG find assets that are not in DNS? It uses techniques like Certificate Transparency Log analysis. Even if a domain isn't advertised, if an SSL certificate was created for it, ThreatNG finds it. It also scans IP blocks associated with the organization's ASN (Autonomous System Number).

Does ThreatNG help with "Zombie IT"? Yes. Zombie IT (abandoned assets) is a major part of the chasm. ThreatNG identifies online assets that haven't changed in months or are running outdated software, flagging them as candidates for decommissioning.

Can ThreatNG see into my internal network? No. ThreatNG focuses on the External Visibility Chasm—what is visible from the public internet. This is critical because it is exactly what attackers see when planning an attack.