Security Monitoring

The Top 10 External Attack Surface Management (EASM) Software

Discover the top External Attack Surface Management (EASM) Software with features like perimeter scanning, digital footprint mapping, and vulnerability assessment.

The Top 10 External Attack Surface Management (EASM) software include:
  • 1. Attaxion
  • 2. Intruder
  • 3. Crowdstrike Falcon Surface
  • 4. CyCognito EASM
  • 5. Detectify
  • 6. Edgescan
  • 7. Halo Security External Attack Surface Management
  • 8. Mandiant Attack Surface Management
  • 9. Microsoft Defender EASM
  • 10. Palo Alto Networks Cortex Xpanse

External Attack Surface Management (EASM) software provides organizations with a holistic view of their internet-exposed assets, identifying potential vulnerabilities and threats before they allow an attacker in. These tools allow security teams to stay on top of their assets and vulnerabilities, as well as assisting in ensuring compliance with various regulatory requirements.

External-facing assets are ones that can be accessed from outside of an organization; this includes websites, servers, public clouds, and credentials. EASM tools work by constantly scanning the open web, deep web, and dark web to identify exposed databases, misconfigured cloud assets, forgotten subdomains, unpatched software, and other potential vulnerabilities associated with an organization. EASM tools synthesize various data sources and employ advanced algorithms to provide real-time insights and actionable intelligence. In doing so, they help organizations reduce their attack surface and mitigate potential security breaches.

In recent years, the EASM market has grown significantly. Many vendors now offer a range of features including vulnerability management, risk prioritization, threat intelligence, and integration capabilities. The ideal software solution should be comprehensive, user-friendly, accurate, and efficient, thereby allowing you to gain critical information relating to the risks and threats that your organization faces.

In this shortlist, we’ll examine the top EASM software solutions, evaluating them based on their features, effectiveness, integration capabilities, user feedback, and overall performance. We will provide insights into each tool’s capabilities, helping businesses and security professionals make informed decisions.

Attaxion Logo

Attaxion is a cloud-based External Attack Surface Management (EASM) platform designed to offer the best asset coverage and help teams identify critical vulnerabilities and effectively remediate risks. The platform includes a comprehensive admin dashboard, which classifies and identifies vulnerabilities so that admins can easily discover vulnerable assets and focus security efforts.

Attaxion discovers all internet-facing assets on your networks, mapping connections and technologies to provide teams with more comprehensive visibility into at-risk assets and reduce shadow IT. The platform continuously monitors assets to identify vulnerabilities based on evolving threat landscape trends. It also discovers new assets automatically and continuously scans for both new and unknown vulnerabilities. 

Vulnerabilities are classified based on severity and potential impact, enabling teams to quickly address critical issues. The platform provides granular context on all identified vulnerabilities, including metadata and timestamps. The platform also provides API capabilities to analyze any assets, infrastructure, configurations, and connections. For remediation, the platform provides detailed analysis of security weaknesses, automations for quickly addressing vulnerabilities, and comprehensive reporting and analytics. The platform provides integrations with project management and ticketing tools, as well as providing C-level reporting for easily demonstrating ROI.

Attaxion is a comprehensive EASM platform promising comprehensive visibility over your assets, with deep context around security vulnerabilities and assets, including health monitoring. The platform can uncover assets completely unknown to your security team and can be a critical tool in improving your overall security posture.

Intruder Logo

Intruder is an EASM and vulnerability scanning security solution designed to help teams find, monitor and remediate vulnerabilities. The platform continuously scans and monitors your internet exposure, infrastructure, web apps cloud systems, IPs and more, and provides prioritized alerts for security vulnerabilities.

Intruder enables teams to build a more comprehensive view of their security exposure. The solution is built around a modern, fully featured admin console, which prioritizes threats based on context and severity, enabling teams to focus on the most critical problems. Teams can easily search the network to find open ports and services, with adaptive filters to help you quickly find vulnerabilities.

Intruder provides continuous network monitoring, automated vulnerability scanning, and proactive threat response. The solution aims to reduce your attack surface through continuous scanning, identifying any changes, unintentionally exposed services, or emerging threats. Intruder also tracks all changes to your network environment, cloud services, and assets, with notifications to alert you to potential breaches. Intruder’s supports penetration testing capabilities with point-in-time testing or vulnerabilities. In addition, Intruder also monitors your SSL/TLS certificate expiry dates.

Overall, Intruder is a comprehensive platform for attack surface management and vulnerability monitoring. By constantly monitoring and scanning your network, the solution helps reduce the time taken to respond to vulnerabilities. The platform also supports reporting and compliance, with a broad range of reports and audits available. We recommend Intruder as a scalable, effective security monitoring solution.

Crowdstrike Logo

CrowdStrike Falcon Surface is a dedicated EASM solution. Today we see an increased reliance on internet-facing assets (in both number and dependence) such as cloud workloads, websites, and user credentials. CrowdStrike aims to pinpoint and secure these exposed assets. Falcon Surface’s primary function is to enable security teams to detect, prioritize, and manage all exposed internet-facing assets, whether they’re centralized, remote, on-premises, or associated with third-party vendors.

The product takes a comprehensive approach to inventorying and analysing your assets; it uses internet mapping technology to continuously scan known and unknown assets, allowing it to detect vulnerabilities easily. By indexing over 7 billion exposed assets each year, Falcon Surface can offer comprehensive and extensive insights into potential risks from an external perspective. The platform identifies a range of asset types and can correlate each asset to its source with an AI-enabled system. The platform not only helps in discovering these assets, but also classifies, analyzes, and prioritizes them based on a contextualized risk score. Additionally, it provides users with actionable remediation steps for identified risks, allowing for efficient vulnerability management.

Crowdstrike Logo
CyCognito Logo

The CyCognito platform is a comprehensive security solution designed to identify and address an organization’s potential vulnerabilities from an attacker’s perspective. The platform utilizes advanced Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and a graph data model to autonomously discover and understand all business relationships. Continuous automatic asset discovery identifies potential vulnerabilities promptly, ensuring businesses remain proactive against security threats.

The platform offers detailed asset contextualization, allowing organizations to understand vital details about their assets, such as ownership, business purpose, risk profile, and attractiveness to potential attackers. CyCognito also conducts automated and continuous security tests on all assets to reveal potential attack vectors beyond common vulnerabilities, ensuring swift detection and response to potential threats. The platform’s analytical capabilities allow it to prioritize critical attack vectors, thereby providing essential information and reducing alert fatigue. CyCognito will then provide clear remediation guidance integrated with popular IT technologies, ensuring a streamlined and actionable path forward for security and IT teams.

CyCognito Logo
Detectify Logo

Detectify provides an EASM platform that enables continuous discovery and monitoring of all Internet-exposed assets through surface monitoring. The solution assesses an organization’s full public DNS space, including ports, and permits users to fingerprint their technology stacks without complex configurations. This results in a comprehensive view of the attack surface which is further enhanced by its ‘Application Scanning’ tool which offers a closer look at custom-built applications. This facilitates the detection and securing of critical vulnerabilities. The platform’s scanning mechanism can monitor custom apps in detail, oversee state and testing in authenticated zones, and navigate broad applications using smart filtering.

The platform supports Single Sign-On (SSO) as well as API access, domain verification options, custom modules, and tailored policies for managing the attack surface. The platform can accommodate large-scale enterprise monitoring and has provisions for a dedicated Customer Success Manager (CSM). To assist in organizational arrangements, a multi-team setup is available. One area that sets Detectify apart is its crawling and fuzzing engine that exceeds standard capabilities of many Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) scanners.

Detectify Logo
EdgeScan Logo

Edgescan is a comprehensive cybersecurity platform that integrates several advanced security solutions including external attack surface management, risk-based vulnerability management, application security testing, API security testing, and penetration testing (PenTesting). Edgescan’s EASM offers the ability to detect potential threats across external services. The platform can inventory, monitor, and manage corporate assets and digital footprints, addressing vulnerabilities when they are detected to ensure that you stay on top of your attack surface area.

One of Edgescan’s most notable features is its hybrid approach, blending EASM with Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) and Risk-based Vulnerability Management (RBVM). This combination delivers in-depth, actionable, and validated vulnerability insights, emphasizing risk prioritization for timely remediation. Edgescan’s platform can identify various network devices, operating systems, databases, and web applications, ensuring comprehensive visibility across an organization’s IT ecosystem. Additionally, the platform offers customizable alerts, allowing organizations to stay informed about any significant changes or potential risks in real-time.

EdgeScan Logo
Halo Security Logo

Halo Security offers a comprehensive external cybersecurity testing and monitoring solution that provides businesses with an in-depth view of their digital environment. Halo Security’s agentless discovery engine identifies assets, allowing businesses to manage their cybersecurity efforts from a centralized dashboard, thereby ensuring that older assets are accounted for, as well as newer ones when onboarded. The platform not only allows businesses to monitor assets like websites, servers, and third-party scripts, but also offers detailed insights into areas such as TLS certificates, HTTP headers, forms, and OWASP security threats.

With Halo Security, businesses can also get real-time notifications of changes, ensuring they’re always informed about their security landscape. The platform is able to evaluate the security of external entities like subsidiaries and cloud migrations, making sure all assets are consistently monitored. Once web-based vulnerabilities have been addressed, Halo’s platform will also scan for server based issues (such as out-of-date software, misconfigured services, and known vulnerabilities) to ensure you have a comprehensive understanding of your network.

Halo Security Logo
Mandiant Logo

Mandiant Advantage Attack Surface Management (ASM) is a module within the Mandiant Advantage platform designed to offer advanced cybersecurity insights and monitoring. As IT environments incorporate more features like cloud computing, IoT devices, and microservices, managing security is becoming ever more challenging. Mandiant’s ASM aims to address these challenges by providing an in-depth view of the extended enterprise, enabling cybersecurity teams to swiftly discover and analyze internet assets across various dynamic and distributed environments.

Mandiant Advantage Attack Surface Management’s key features include continuous monitoring of assets and infrastructure, helping teams detect changes and potential vulnerabilities. The platform utilizes Mandiant’s expertise and threat intelligence to proactively assess risks and exposures in real-time, ensuring that security teams are notified as new assets are discovered and assessed. The platform also integrates with numerous vendors including Akamai DNS Edge, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, GitHub, GoDaddy, and Cloudflare, facilitating streamlined discovery workflows.

Mandiant Logo
Microsoft Logo

Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management (Defender EASM) is a digital security tool designed to monitor an organization’s external online infrastructure. It offers continuous mapping and discovery of the digital attack surface, giving security and IT teams a clear view of their external digital environment. This visibility allows for new components and assets to be identified; the platform can than carry out risk prioritization calculations and decide how best to manage vulnerabilities outside of traditional firewall protections.

Defender EASM utilizes Microsoft’s specialized discovery technology that searches for infrastructure associated with known legitimate assets, referred to as “discovery seeds”. This method is able to connect various infrastructure elements within an organization, revealing previously unidentified properties, and forming a comprehensive understanding of the attack surface. Defender EASM provides real-time insights into an organization’s evolving global external attack surface. It also aids in recognizing unmanaged assets, including those from shadow IT and routine business expansion. The tool’s capacity for multi-cloud visibility ensures the inventory is continually updated. Additionally, it helps in pinpointing vulnerabilities in these unmanaged resources, allowing for timely remediation.

Microsoft Logo
Palo Alto Logo

Palo Alto Networks Cortex Xpanse is designed to manage an organization’s attack surface. Xpanse allows users to actively discover and index potential risks on connected systems and exposed services through continuous internet scanning. The platform detects and inventories both on-premises and cloud assets across multiple cloud providers including AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Expander is one part of Cortex Xpanse, it is focused on automatically discovering and responding to unmanaged IT infrastructure. Through supervised machine learning models, Expander maps out the attack surface and prioritizes remediation, thereby significantly enhancing detection and response times. The Active Response Module automatically addresses vulnerabilities and exposed assets, rather than merely flagging them. The platform can deploy new policies quickly, especially when new security concerns arise, ensuring prompt action in a dynamic security environment. Overall, this makes it an efficient and effective external attack surface management platform.

Palo Alto Logo
The Top 10 External Attack Surface Management (EASM) Software