Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)

Continuous threat exposure management, or CTEM, is a Gartner-defined strategic framework that helps organizations continuously identify, prioritize, validate, and mobilize remediation of exposures based on real-world exploitability and business impact.

Through continuous monitoring, evaluation, validation, and remediation, CTEM enables security teams to align security efforts with business risk and focus on the exposures that truly matter, continuously improving the organization’s resilience.

Unlike traditional vulnerability management, which relies on point-in-time scans and severity-based scoring, CTEM is an ongoing, risk-based program that prioritizes exposures in the context of threat likelihood, exploitability, and potential business impact.

CTEM is not achieved with a single security tool or platform – it is a cross-functional operating model that unifies security, IT, and business stakeholders to drive measurable risk reduction outcomes.

Continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) is important because it provides organizations with much-needed real-time visibility into vulnerabilities and threats, and empowers them to prioritize these cyber risks before they become exploitations or data breaches.

CTEM functions that help organizations include: 

• Rapid vulnerability identification: Pinpoint security gaps as soon as possible across systems, networks, and digital assets.
• Proactive risk management: Discover threats before they are exploited and minimize potential damage by prioritizing risks.
• Real-time visibility: Easily view and respond to emerging threats across the attack surface.
• Resilience and adaptability: Constantly assess the organization’s security posture and adapt as quickly as possible to stay vigilant against the latest threats. 
• Cost-effective compliance: Meet regulatory compliance and cut costs by addressing threats in real time rather than dealing with the painful, costly repercussions of an attack.

Continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) is an offensive cybersecurity approach that can work with several automated and manual tools including red teaming, pentesting, vulnerability scanning, exposure assessments, and more. 

In working with cyber asset attack surface management (CAASM), and adversarial exposure validation technologies such as pentesting as a service (PTaaS), and breach and attack simulation (BAS), CTEM is a powerful solution for organizations to enhance their security posture, reduce risk, and improve compliance. CTEM can also help organizations automate workflows, ensure collaboration, and measure improvements in security posture.

The difference between continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) and traditional cybersecurity approaches is the focus of CTEM on proactive and ongoing processes. Instead of relying solely on periodic assessments that may occur 1-4 times a year, CTEM emphasizes continuous monitoring, detection, assessment, and management of threats.

Gartner defines Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) as a cyclical 5-phase framework to build a proactive approach to exposure management. The five phases of the CTEM framework include scoping, discovery, prioritization, validation, and mobilization.

1. Scoping: Define your purpose and scope of systems, critical assets, data, and infrastructure.
2. Discovery: Uncover potential vulnerabilities, threats, and exposures.
3. Prioritization: Identify critical risks, exposures, or sensitive data that can pose the most harm to the company.
4. Validation: Confirm the findings from the discovery stage and test them.
5. Mobilization: Implement incident response and remediate vulnerabilities.

While individual platforms like PlexTrac can enable and streamline the CTEM lifeycle, building an effective CTEM program requires multiple security tools and intelligence. In practice, CTEM typically incorporates a combination of:

• Continuous penetration testing or Pentesting as a Service (PTaaS)
• Attack surface management (ASM)
• Breach and attack simulation (BAS)
• Exposure assessment platforms (EAP)
• Vulnerability management (VM)
• Threat intelligence
• Ticketing and remediation tools

Point-in-time pentesting is no longer sufficient. PlexTrac enables continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) by serving as the control center for  ingesting and managing the data produced by both automated and manual testing and then enabling prioritization, ticketing, and tracking through remediation and retesting.

PlexTrac’s platform streamlines the CTEM lifecycle by:

• Creating a comprehensive data intelligence layer from exposure assessment data sources such as pentests, vulnerability scanners, and attack surface management platforms
• Streamlining reporting and prioritizing findings remediation
• Delivering offensive security workflow automation to enhance collaboration
• Accelerating mean-time-to-remediation and demonstrating offensive security ROI 
• Preventing risk recurrence by triggering re-testing and validation  

Request your demo today to learn how to close the loop on your testing and remediation cycle with PlexTrac.

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