The digital landscape experiences constant change. Because of that change, the threat of a cyberattack is constantly evolving as well. This is why your organization needs to develop strategies for continuous threat exposure mitigation.

What is Continuous Threat Exposure in Cyber Security?

Continuous threat exposure refers to the constant nature of cyberattacks on organizations. Since the risk of a cyberattack, such as a data breach, is persistent, multifaceted, and dynamic, organizations need to focus on strategies to mitigate these threats.

Here are some key aspects to consider when thinking about continuous threat exposure.

• Attack Surface Expansion: Every new application, machine, and server is another thing in your organization’s digital environment that needs to be protected. This means beginning to enable continuous monitoring for every new surface you bring into your environment. You can think of it as every time that you add something to your digital environment the target for cybercriminals gets bigger and potentially easier to hit.
• Dynamic Threats: Cybercriminals are constantly changing their tactics in response to new developments in cyber security. A new defense measure is created, and another vulnerability is sought out by attackers. Due to the dynamic nature of these threats organizations must continually monitor their defense systems to always be ready to respond to new vulnerabilities in their network.
• Insider Threats: In a digital system, often the most vulnerable point is the human user. This is why many cyber criminals will employ social engineering to trick a person into letting them into the system. Organizations should consider this when developing measures for staving off cyberattacks.

8 Cyber Security Strategies for Continuous Threat Exposure Mitigation

Now that we’ve talked a bit more about what continuous threat exposure is, let’s take a look at 8 strategies for continuous threat exposure mitigation.

1. Threat Intelligence Integration

It is important to gather data regarding current and emerging threats in the digital landscape. Having a threat intelligence feed is a good way to keep up to date on the dynamic cyber security threats out there.

2. Real-time Monitoring and Analytics

Integrating security information and event management (SIEM) tools can aid in real-time monitoring. They allow you to gather more data for detecting trends and correlated events to then make more informed decisions for how to respond to threats. If threat intelligence is aiming to prepare based on what’s happening out there, then SIEM tools are helping you to address what might be happening in your organization.

3. Behavioral Analysis

Behavioral analysis can consist of things such as monitoring logins, excessive use of data, and other similar data points. This can help identify an external breach or a compromised insider threat.

4. Security Training

It is important that your employees complete continuous training on cyber security threats such as phishing and business email compromise. As mentioned earlier regarding insider threats, the human user in a digital environment is often the weakest point in an organization’s cyber security structure. Training for employees about the constantly changing threat landscape can help reduce risk from users, therefore reducing the bad behaviors a behavioral analysis tool is looking for.

5. Vulnerability Management

Having your network undergo routine vulnerability scanning and penetration testing can help with finding issues and taking action to remediate them. It is important to make these scans routine so they can continue monitoring your network. (Link to our page.)

6. Zero Trust Architecture

A zero trust environment limits access within your organization’s network by setting policies such as segmenting the network to only the minimum number of users possible. This is also a measure to reduce the potential risk of an insider threat breach.

7. Threat Hunting

This is proactive searching for signs of compromise and vulnerabilities. Threat hunting involves analyzing network traffic and endpoints as a few main areas of focus.

8. Incident Response

Not only is it important to know how to defend our network, it is just as important to know how to handle a breach. All organizations should have an incident response plan for cyber-attacks. These plans should be tested regularly so adjustments can be made because as mentioned before, the threat landscape for cyber security is constantly changing.

Conclusion

These 8 strategies for continuous threat exposure mitigation are just a few primary areas of action you can take to better harden your organization to the constant development of cyber-attacks that are out there. Some of these areas are more intensive than others yet all are important.

The most important thing you can do is not remain idle and instead begin moving with these 8 strategies for continuous threat exposure mitigation.

As always, we are here to help.