WeCloud Popular External Attack Surface Management (EASM) Solutions Today

Overview of External Attack Surface Management (EASM)

Definition and Importance of EASM in Modern Cybersecurity

External Attack Surface Management (EASM) is an essential cybersecurity practice that continuously discovers, monitors, and protects an organization’s internet-facing digital assets to minimize exposure to external threats. This method provides an “outside-in” view, which accurately simulates how an attacker sees and can target an organization’s digital infrastructure.

The assets managed by EASM are diverse, including public websites, web applications, e-commerce operations, cloud services (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS), application programming interfaces (APIs), IP addresses, domain names, and any other digital access points accessible from the internet. The core goal of EASM is to identify potential vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, leaked credentials, or any other external information and processes that an attacker can exploit to infiltrate a system.

The importance of EASM in the context of modern cybersecurity is undeniable. The attack surface of organizations has been expanding at an unprecedented pace due to the rapid increase in cloud service adoption, remote work models, and digital transformation initiatives. This expansion creates a multitude of potential entry points for threat actors, and EASM plays a key role in mapping this evolving “boundary,” thereby protecting against potential threats.

The external digital attack surface has always been a major target for cybercriminals. Malicious actors are constantly scanning the organization’s public assets for exploitable vulnerabilities. EASM helps organizations identify and quickly remediate the security vulnerabilities that attackers are most likely to identify and target. In this way, EASM significantly reduces the risk of cyberattacks through proactively identifying and eliminating weaknesses before they can be exploited. Not only does this help reduce exposure time, but it also enhances the organization’s overall resilience to attacks. Statistics show that 83% of security breaches in 2023 were committed by external attackers, with 95% of them being financially motivated. This data clearly highlights that external attack surface management is a top security priority.

EASM’s approach represents a strategic shift from passive defense to proactive in cybersecurity. Instead of just reacting to attacks after they occur, EASM allows organizations to act first, identify, and close security vulnerabilities before they are exploited. This shift reflects a larger trend in cybersecurity, where organizations are moving away from traditional defense models, which often rely on perimeter controls such as firewalls and intrusion prevention systems (IPS). Instead, they are turning to ongoing exposure and risk management strategies, especially as network boundaries become more blurred due to the proliferation of cloud computing and remote work models.

Another important point is that EASM is not only essential for large businesses but also for organizations of all sizes. Although many references refer to “large enterprises” or “Fortune 500 organizations” as primary users of EASM, smaller organizations also frequently become targeted by attackers due to their less secure external attack surface. This indicates that the challenge of managing the external attack surface is a common problem, not limited by the size of the organization. This awareness could lead to a significant increase in the adoption of EASM in small and medium-sized businesses, driving the development of EASM solutions specifically designed for these market segments, at a lower cost and easier to implement to meet their growing security needs.

Difference Between EASM and Other Attack Surface Management Methods

To better understand EASM’s unique role, it’s important to differentiate it from other attack surface management methods. Despite its commonalities, EASM possesses distinct characteristics that make it an effective complement to a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy.

First, EASM is a specialized component of the overall Attack Surface Management (ASM). While ASM covers both internal and external attack surfaces, providing a comprehensive view of the assets before and after the network perimeter, EASM focuses specifically on protecting the commercial activities of businesses that go beyond traditional internal security measures. This means that EASM targets public, easily accessible assets from the internet, while ASM has a wider scope, including internal systems and applications.

Second, EASM is different from traditional Vulnerability Management (VM). Traditional VM methods often rely on periodic internal scans and manual penetration testing to identify weaknesses. In contrast, EASM operates continuously, focusing on discovering and monitoring internet-facing assets, including those that are unregulated or accidentally exposed. EASM significantly complements VMs by proactively identifying unknown assets and misconfigurations before they can be exploited by attackers, filling in the blind spots that traditional VM engines can ignore.

Third, when compared to Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management (CAASM), EASM is primarily focused on discovering and protecting publicly available assets, which are accessible by anyone on the internet. In contrast, CAASM has a wider scope, focusing on both internal and external attack surfaces, often through API integration with internal tools for an overall view of the asset. One notable difference is that EASM is better able to find “shadow IT” (unapproved tools and applications) by scanning the network from the outside, whereas CAASM may miss these assets without direct integration with that application.

Finally, EASM and Penetration Testing also have different but complementary roles. Penetration testing is a routine and manual operation that simulates an attack to look for vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, EASM works continuously, providing continuous protection by monitoring and detecting changes in real-time. Insights from EASM about identified weaknesses can be used to inform and optimize penetration tests, making them more effective and focused.

From the above analysis, it can be seen that EASM is not an alternative but an essential addition to a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy. EASM fills a critical gap in providing “outside-in” visibility that traditional security tools can’t fully fill. This implies that organizations should not treat EASM as a standalone solution, but as an integral part of a broader exposure management strategy. This strategy combines internal and external tools to achieve a comprehensive view of risk. The convergence of various security areas such as vulnerability management (VM), cyber threat intelligence (CTI), and digital risk protection (DRP) with EASM is a clear trend, indicating the growing need for integrated security solutions.

The increasing complexity of the modern IT environment, especially the proliferation of cloud computing and the prevalence of “shadow IT”, has created an urgent need for an “outside-in” approach to EASM. The expansion of the attack surface due to cloud adoption, remote work, and digital transformation has led to the emergence of unknown assets and “shadow IT” as key security challenges. These factors cause a lack of visibility with traditional tools, creating security blind spots that attackers can easily exploit.

EASM is positioned as the solution to solve these “blind spots” by proactively discovering what can be seen from the outside, regardless of internal management. This allows organizations to identify and manage assets that they may not know existed, thereby minimizing risk.

Key Capabilities of EASM Solutions

Modern EASM solutions are equipped with a robust range of capabilities, designed to provide comprehensive visibility and proactive management of an organization’s external attack surface.

Asset Detection and Inventory (including Shadow IT)

One of the core capabilities of EASM is the ability to continuously scan the network to map the external attack surface automatically. These solutions automatically discover and map internet-facing assets, including domain names, IP address blocks, servers, email contacts, autonomous system numbers (ASNs), and WHOIS organizations. By using advanced automation tools, organizations can quickly detect changes and newly exposed assets, ensuring that nothing is missed during the inventory.

This capability is especially important in identifying “Shadow IT” – unapproved or forgotten tools and applications, as well as unintentionally exposed test environments. EASM tools collect data from a variety of publicly available sources such as DNS records, WHOIS databases, and certificate transparency logs to identify both known and unknown assets. The fact that EASM works without internal context 5 and scans from the outside is what allows it to detect these assets. The lack of internal visibility into all internet-facing assets, often due to the rapid growth of cloud environments and the emergence of Shadow IT, creates security blind spots. EASM’s “outside-in” approach allows for the detection and management of these assets, thus minimizing risk.

Continuous Monitoring and Real-Time Visibility

EASM works as an automated, continuous process that monitors and detects internet-facing assets in search of potential vulnerabilities. It tracks changes in real-time and quickly detects newly exposed services, misconfigurations or “policy drift,” and the reappearance of vulnerabilities after updates. This continuous visibility is vital to maintaining security awareness and enabling security teams to respond quickly to potential threats. It’s like a “digital watchtower” that constantly warns of security vulnerabilities as soon as they appear, instead of taking weeks or months to detect.

Identifying Vulnerabilities and Prioritizing Risks

EASM solutions are specifically designed to identify potential vulnerabilities in an organization’s public digital attack surface. The scope of the detection includes configuration errors, unpatched software, leaked credentials, exposed admin dashboards, and unprotected development tools. EASM provides valuable context and prioritizes risk, allowing organizations to address the most critical and potentially impactful vulnerabilities first. Modern platforms enrich this raw data with threat intelligence, highlighting whether a vulnerability is being actively exploited in practice.

The ability to prioritize risk based on business context and threat intelligence is a more important capability than just detecting vulnerabilities. Organizations not only want to know what is vulnerable, but they also want to know which ones are most important to fix, based on the actual likelihood of exploitation and the potential business impact. This represents a maturity in the security mindset: from focusing only on the number of vulnerabilities found to focusing on the vulnerabilities with the highest risk and the most likely to be exploited. This approach helps to optimize resource allocation and enhance the overall effectiveness of security efforts.

Remediation and Automation Guide

EASM doesn’t stop at detection. It also provides detailed remediation guidance, including instructions for patching or necessary configuration changes, along with the context of the associated risks such as business impact and asset classification. More importantly, EASM confirms the effectiveness of the corrective actions taken, ensuring that they actually reduce the likelihood of cyberattacks. Some advanced solutions also provide quick, easy-to-implement remediation steps that help IT and security teams implement real-time risk mitigation measures.

Integration with Existing Security Tools

To operate effectively in a complex security environment, EASM solutions are designed to seamlessly integrate with an organization’s existing security tools, including Security Event and Information Management (SIEM), Automation, and Security Response (SOAR) systems, firewalls, and endpoint protection platforms. This integration leverages existing infrastructure, enhancing threat detection and response capabilities without requiring major changes or creating unnecessary redundancy.

Third-Party Risk Management and Supply Chain

In the context of an increasingly complex digital ecosystem, an organization’s IT system is often connected to subsidiaries, suppliers, partners, and many other third parties. EASM is capable of providing important insights into these relationships and the potential security risks they can pose to the organization. In particular, EASM extends monitoring capabilities beyond the internal infrastructure to include domain names, IP addresses, and third-party assets, providing deeper visibility into the entire digital supply chain.

Brand Protection and Dark Web Monitoring

Advanced EASM solutions not only monitor the public internet, but also extend coverage to the deep and dark webs, GitHub repositories, developer forums, and paste pages to search for evidence of leaked data related to an organization’s domain or infrastructure. This capability helps detect and remove malicious domains, fake accounts, and phishing applications that may contain malware, thereby protecting the organization’s reputation and customers.

The convergence of capabilities in a single EASM platform is a key trend, reflecting the market’s need for comprehensive and unified security solutions. Initially, EASM focused primarily on discovering assets and vulnerabilities. However, today’s leading vendors have integrated dark web monitoring, brand protection, third-party risk management, and even threat intelligence into their platforms. For example, Trend Micro integrates Extended Detection and Response (XDR), Vulnerability Risk Management (VRM), and Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM). SOCRadar provides EASM, Digital Risk Protection Services (DRPS), and Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) in a single Extended Threat Intelligence (XTI) platform. This suggests that organizations are looking for “all-in-one” solutions to reduce the complexity of managing multiple individual security tools and improve data correlation. This convergence is also a direct response to “security complexity” and the situation of “siloed teams” in modern IT environments.

Benefits of Implementing EASM

The implementation of External Attack Surface Management (EASM) solutions offers many significant benefits, go beyond the usual technical scope, and positively impact an organization’s operations, operations, and business.

Enhance Security Posture and Reduce Risk

EASM plays a critical role in significantly reducing the risk of cyberattacks by proactively identifying and closing security vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. It provides a comprehensive risk awareness, revealing the full range of potential vulnerabilities in the system. By eliminating unknown and unmanaged assets, EASM narrows the potential attack window and minimizes security operational “interference”. This helps to reduce the mean time to detect (MTTD) of vulnerabilities, which in turn significantly shortens the amount of time that an organization can be exposed. Studies show that organizations often explore 30-40% more assets than they know when implementing EASM, showing a significant level of improvement in visibility.

Improved Regulatory Compliance (NIST, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, GDPR, HIPAA)

Risk management for sensitive data is a vital element to ensure compliance with various regulations and standards. EASM provides the visibility needed to identify and close attack vectors that can lead to data breaches, which in turn helps organizations meet their governance and compliance obligations. It ensures that organizations have an up-to-date internet-facing asset arsenal, closes security gaps, and maintains a comprehensive audit trail to demonstrate compliance. Many EASM solutions now also support specific frameworks such as NIST, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, NIS2, and DORA, SOC2.

Faster Incident Response and Effective Remediation

EASM dramatically shortens the time between exposure detection and remediation by alerting security teams quickly, sometimes in just a few hours after a change. When security incidents occur, having a comprehensive and up-to-date map of the attack surface allows for faster prevention and resolution. Early detection of new vulnerabilities and changes in the attack surface allows security teams to remediate issues immediately before they can be exploited by attackers.7 This not only minimizes risk, but also optimizes resources. ZeroFox customers have reported a 65% reduction in remediation time and a 47% reduction in issues after implementing EASM.

Eliminate Blind Points and Unknown Assets

One of the most important benefits of EASM is its ability to eliminate security blind spots. EASM ensures continuous discovery and tracking of unknown or forgotten assets, helping security teams stay ahead of the organization’s growing digital footprint. It helps identify non-standard deployments, standalone test environments, or forgotten DNS entries, thereby closing the visibility gap left by traditional asset inventory systems.

The benefits of EASM go beyond security teams, positively impacting operations, operations, and business areas. EASM not only focuses on reducing technical risk, but also improves the mean time to detection, eliminates blind spots, breaks down organizational silos, improves risk-based prioritization, enhances regulatory and cyber insurance readiness, improve reputation, and reduce business interruptions. The success story of one bank clearly illustrates the impact of EASM on the stock price and the resilience of the organization. This shows that EASM is becoming a strategic enterprise risk management tool, not just a mere security tool.

Popular EASM Solutions Today and Future Trends

The market for EASM solutions is growing rapidly, with many leading vendors constantly innovating to meet the increasingly complex security needs of organizations.

Top EASM Vendors Review (According to Gartner and Forrester)

Reports and reviews from reputable research organizations such as Gartner and Forrester provide insight into the top EASM vendors in the market.

According to the Gartner Peer Insights and Magic Quadrant, some of the prominent vendors include:

Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management with an average rating of 4.3/5.
Halo Security scored a 4.6/5, featuring asset discovery, risk and vulnerability assessment, and manual penetration testing services in a unified dashboard.
RiskProfiler leads the way with a 4.9/5, is highly rated for its external risk management and digital asset protection, uses AI, machine learning, and proprietary algorithms to provide unified visibility and prioritize remediation based on severity.
CrowdStrike Falcon Surface achieved a 4.5/5, recognized for its ability to manage enterprise risk through the application of cutting-edge technology, with a focus on endpoint protection, cloud workloads, and data.
The CyCognito Platform with 4.7/5, founded by veterans of the national intelligence agency, has a deep understanding of how attackers exploit the blind spots and paths of least resistance.
Darktrace is recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Network Detection and Response (NDR) 2025, with its Exploit Prediction Assessment feature that helps validate exploitable vulnerabilities through secure simulated attacks.

Gartner also mentions other vendors in the Security Threat Intelligence Products and Services category, such as Recorded Future, Cyble Vision, CloudSEK XVigil, Falcon Adversary Intelligence (CrowdStrike), SOCRadar Digital Risk Protection Platform, and IntSights External Threat Protection Suite.

On the Forrester Wave side, the “Attack Surface Management Solutions, Q3 2024” report identified the most important vendors. Palo Alto Networks was ranked as a Leader in this report, with its AI-powered Cortex platform, demonstrating its vision to be the end-to-end solution for asset discovery, prioritizing risks and minimizing risks. Trend Micro was also recognized as a Leader in the Forrester Wave Q3 2024, with its R&D commitment and innovative approach towards Zero Trust, expanding its coverage to identities, devices, networks, and cloud workloads. Forrester highlights that 72% of security decision-makers have adopted EASM or are in the process of implementing it.

On G2 Crowd Reviews, a user-based software review platform, Wiz is ranked as a Leader and Top Trending, as well as Best Free Software. Cymulate is rated as Easiest to Use in the Attack Surface Management category. SOCRadar Extended Threat Intelligence received a high rating (4.8/5) for its ease of use, customer support, and features such as dark web monitoring and brand protection.

Compare the features and capabilities of leading EASM solutions

The leading EASM solutions on the market have distinct strengths and features that are tailored to the different needs of the organization:

Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management: Optimized for monitoring and securing multiple internet-facing assets at scale. Key features include continuous asset discovery and inventory, a risk information dashboard, asset management with custom filters, and role-based access control.
CrowdStrike Falcon Surface: Featured in threat intelligence and proactive EASM use cases. The platform uses AI to analyze the attack surface, provide continuous visibility, domain-based mapping, non-intrusive operations, and identify a wide range of assets such as endpoints, nodes, servers, IoT and OT devices.
CyCognito ASM: Highly regarded in the discovery of unknown risk. Key features include automated discovery, proactive security testing (DAST) using a multi-engine testing architecture, prioritizing risk with mining intelligence, and accelerating remediation by sending data directly to remediation tools and teams.
Palo Alto Networks Cortex Xpanse: Optimized for proactive attack surface management, automating the discovery and remediation of security blind spots. The platform provides proactive discovery, automated risk mitigation through playbooks, machine learning for attack surface mapping, zero-day vulnerability management, shadow IT management, ransomware defense, and security assessment support in M&A transactions.
SOCRadar XTI: An extensive threat intelligence platform that combines EASM, Digital Risk Protection Services (DRPS), and Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI). Key features include multi-environment monitoring (including the dark web and cloud), real-time threat detection (such as brand impersonation, phishing domains), a scalable SaaS platform, a custom dashboard, and an early warning system.
Censys Exposure Management: An industry leader in internet scanning technology, providing the most comprehensive and up-to-date data. Key features include daily scanning of all 65,000 ports and cloud services, automatic log detection, detailed historical data access, and structured data with advanced search functionality.
Detectify: Featured in black-box testing, high vulnerability detection rate (99.7% accuracy), automated scanning, and the ability to minimize information overload for security teams by providing low-noise detections.
Tenable ASM: Extend traditional vulnerability management with EASM, map external visibility infrastructure, and update this information continuously.
Halo Security: Provides asset discovery, risk and vulnerability assessment, manual penetration testing services in a unified dashboard.
Panorays: Specializing in vendor risk and third-party security management.
Wiz: Best for securing multi-cloud workloads.
SentinelOne Singularity Cloud: Provides a multi-cloud workload security solution.
Mandiant ASM (Google): EASM orientation based on incident response.

Trends and Future Developments of EASM

The EASM market is undergoing significant changes, driven by increasing digital complexity and the development of advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities.

Integrate AI and Machine Learning: AI and Machine Learning (ML) are revolutionizing EASM by automating the discovery of external assets and detecting vulnerabilities earlier. Predictive analytics identifies potential attack vectors based on historical threat patterns, providing more accurate and timely alerts. AI enhances the accuracy of domain discovery (reaching 92% accuracy) and significantly reduces the manual workload for IT staff, allowing them to focus more on strategic tasks. However, it should be noted that attackers are also leveraging AI to enhance reconnaissance and carry out larger-scale attacks.
Convergence with other security areas: EASM is strongly converging with other security areas such as vulnerability management (VM), automated security authentication (ASV), cyber threat intelligence (CTI), and digital risk protection (DRP) to form integrated security platforms. This trend reflects the growing need for more comprehensive and effective risk management solutions that simplify security management and improve data correlation between different tools. This suggests that organizations are looking for unified solutions to deal with the complexities of the modern digital environment.
Increased Focus on Supply Chain and Third-Party Risk Management: Organizations are increasingly dependent on external vendors and software vendors, leaving them vulnerable to supply chain attacks. Modern EASM extends monitoring beyond internal infrastructure to include domain names, IP addresses, and third-party assets, providing deeper visibility into the digital supply chain. This helps organizations assess the security posture of their partners and proactively monitor changes in their external posture, mitigating supply chain risks before they become a vector of breach.
Expanding Shadow IT and Unknown Asset Coverage: With the rise of cloud services and distributed IT environments, Shadow IT and Unknown Assets remain a major challenge. Modern EASM platforms use comprehensive internet scanning, DNS listing, and native cloud integration to continuously detect and monitor these rogue services, helping security teams regain visibility and put them into administration.
Focus on Attacker-Based Vision: EASM will continue to evolve to provide a more accurate view of how an attacker sees and targets an organization, allowing for more proactive defenses. Simulated attacks to validate real-world risks, such as Darktrace’s Exploit Prediction Assessment feature, will become more common, helping organizations prioritize remediating exploitable vulnerabilities.

The growth of EASM is driven by increasing digital complexity and advanced AI capabilities. The rapid digital transformation, including migration to the cloud, IoT, AI, and remote work, has significantly increased the digital footprint of organizations. This, along with the increasing complexity of IT and reliance on third-party vendors, has created vulnerabilities across a wider range of attack vectors. EASM solutions are evolving to meet these challenges by integrating AI and machine learning to automate risk discovery, analysis, and prioritization.

The EASM market is witnessing a strong convergence of capabilities, moving from standalone tools to integrated security platforms. Initially, EASM can operate separately from related areas such as vulnerability management, automated security authentication, cyber threat intelligence, and digital risk protection. However, these areas are now converging to form integrated security platforms that provide more cohesive and effective risk management. This trend shows the market’s need for comprehensive solutions that simplify security management and improve data correlation.

The need for EASM is not just a compliance requirement but has become a foundational element for modern cybersecurity. The need for EASM has gone far beyond compliance and the outdated practice of manually tracking digital assets. It is now a foundational element of modern cybersecurity. This is driven by the fact that a reactive security approach is financially unsustainable, with the average cost of a data breach increasing ($4.45 million per incident in 2023). Therefore, proactive management of external risks is essential to minimize revenue losses, operational disruptions, and brand damage.