Why Attack Surface Management Is Now a Board-Level Requirement

Executive Summary

Digital programs now sprawl across cloud accounts, SaaS estates, shadow APIs, and contractor-owned infrastructure. Traditional perimeter scanners cannot keep up with weekly acquisitions or the rate at which engineering teams spin up Internet-facing assets. As a result, leaders cannot answer basic questions:

• How many exposed assets do we have right now, and which belong to which business unit?
• Which of those assets are running unpatched software, misconfigured TLS, or leaking data?
• What is the dwell time between exposure and remediation, and how does it impact our regulatory posture?

Attack Surface Management (ASM) addresses these gaps by continuously discovering, classifying, and prioritizing externally reachable assets—well before an adversary probes them. This white paper explains why ASM has become mandatory and how the PlaidNox VETA platform delivers continuous coverage for modern enterprises.

Why ASM Is Required

1. Cloud Adoption Outpaces Inventory: Teams deploy workloads into multiple clouds, often outside central IT change control. Without continuous ASM, organizations rely on static CMDB entries that are obsolete within days.
2. Remote Work & SaaS Expansion: VPN concentrators, remote desktop gateways, and SaaS-integrated connectors multiply the perimeter and create more credential entry points.
3. Third-Party & Supply Chain Risk: Vendors and acquired companies bring their own Internet footprint. ASM offers objective visibility into inherited risk without waiting for questionnaires.
4. Threat Actor Automation: Attackers use masscan, Shodan, and cloud metadata scrapers to find new services minutes after they go live. Only automation on the defender side can match that speed.
5. Regulatory & Cyber Insurance Pressure: Frameworks like SOC 2, PCI DSS 4.0, and cyber insurers demand evidence of continuous exposure monitoring. ASM provides the audit trail.

Core Uses of Attack Surface Management

Traditional Tools Fall Short

• CMDBs rely on manual updates and break when engineering self-service is enabled.
• Vulnerability Scanners require IP ranges and credentials; they rarely cover new domains until someone files a request.
• Pen Tests are point-in-time by design; they do not represent daily drift.

ASM complements these investments by delivering always-on discovery and prioritization that upstream tools can consume.

Introducing VETA: PlaidNox Attack Surface Platform

VETA (https://veta.plaidnox.com) is PlaidNox's managed ASM platform built for defenders who need clarity across multi-cloud environments.

Key Capabilities

1. Global Asset Graph: VETA continuously maps domains, subdomains, IPs, and certificates using passive DNS, recursive crawling, and cloud API integrations. Each asset is enriched with owner, business unit, and tagging metadata.
2. Exposure Intelligence Engine: The platform evaluates TLS hygiene, open ports, leaked buckets, CVE fingerprints, and risky technologies (e.g., outdated Jenkins, exposed dashboards). Findings are deduplicated and normalized into a unified severity model.
3. Change Detection & Drift Alerts: VETA ships delta-based notifications whenever a new asset is discovered, a service banner changes, or a misconfiguration re-emerges. Alerts route via email, Slack, Teams, or SIEM webhooks.
4. Remediation Workflow: Findings map to service owners through integrations with Jira, ServiceNow, or GitLab issues. SLA tracking ensures accountable closure.
5. Subsidiary/Vendor Lenses: VETA maintains separate workspaces for acquisitions, subsidiaries, and strategic vendors so risk teams can enforce baseline controls before integrating networks.
6. Compliance & Reporting: Built-in dashboards visualize exposure trends, remediation velocity, and alignment to frameworks (NIST CSF, ISO 27001, SOC 2). Reports export as PDF or feed directly into GRC tooling.

Architecture Overview

flowchart LR
  subgraph Discovery
    DNS[Passive DNS]
    Web[HTTP Crawlers]
    Cloud[Cloud APIs]
    Cert[Certificate Transparency]
  end

  subgraph VETA Core
    Graph[Asset Graph]
    Engine[Exposure Engine]
    Alerts[Drift & Alert Service]
  end

  subgraph Delivery
    Dashboards
    Tickets[Jira/ServiceNow]
    SIEM
    Slack
  end

  DNS --> Graph
  Web --> Graph
  Cloud --> Graph
  Cert --> Graph
  Graph --> Engine --> Alerts --> Delivery

VETA runs as a multi-tenant SaaS with regional data residency options. Sensitive customer data (e.g., ownership metadata) is encrypted at rest, and all integrations support least-privilege OAuth scopes or API keys.

VETA Core Stack

• Discovery Inputs: Passive DNS, HTTP crawlers, cloud provider APIs, and certificate transparency feeds ingest new assets within minutes.
• Processing Fabric: The asset graph, exposure engine, and drift services correlate telemetry, deduplicate findings, and assign risk.
• Delivery Paths: Dashboards, Jira/ServiceNow, SIEM, and Slack/Teams connectors push prioritized intelligence wherever teams already work.

Operationalizing ASM with VETA

Step 1: Seed Known Assets

• Import root domains, CIDRs, and existing inventories. VETA uses these seeds to start recursive discovery.

Step 2: Automate Continuous Discovery

• Connect AWS, Azure, GCP, and SaaS APIs (e.g., Atlassian, Okta). VETA ingests DNS zones, load balancers, storage buckets, and public endpoints.

Step 3: Prioritize Remediation

• Use VETA's Severity + Business Impact scoring to focus on exploitable issues: exposed admin panels, weak cipher suites, outdated software, misconfigured storage.

Step 4: Integrate with Engineering

• Push findings into existing ticket systems and chat workflows. VETA maintains bidirectional sync to close exposures automatically when assets are fixed or decommissioned.

Step 5: Report & Govern

• Leverage VETA dashboards for weekly security leadership reviews, regulator evidence, and cyber insurance renewals.

Business Outcomes

Case Snapshot (Anonymized)

• Industry: Fintech
• Scale: 3 cloud providers, 70+ domains, 15 subsidiaries
• Challenge: Shadow IT assets exposed misconfigured S3 buckets with PII.
• VETA Impact: Identified 90 previously unknown subdomains, triaged 12 critical exposures, and closed them within 5 days via automated Jira workflows. Demonstrated compliance with SOC 2 auditors using VETA reports.

Additional Case Study: Healthcare Provider

• Industry: Healthcare
• Scale: 5 cloud environments, 150+ domains, multiple partner integrations
• Challenge: Rapid expansion of telehealth services led to unmanaged APIs and exposed patient data portals, increasing compliance risks under HIPAA.
• VETA Impact: Discovered 120 hidden endpoints, flagged 8 high-risk vulnerabilities including unencrypted data transmissions, and integrated remediation into existing ServiceNow pipelines. Reduced exposure dwell time from weeks to hours, ensuring HIPAA alignment and avoiding potential fines.

How ASM Complements Existing Security Controls

Implementation Best Practices

1. Executive Sponsorship: Make ASM a KPI for security leadership to ensure cross-team adoption.
2. Asset Ownership Mapping: Integrate HR/Org data so every asset discovered has an accountable owner.
3. Automation-First Mindset: Use VETA APIs to tag, suppress, or escalate findings programmatically.
4. Measure MTTR: Track mean time to remediation per business unit; publish leaderboards to drive accountability.
5. Limit Alert Fatigue: Use VETA's risk-based filters to focus on exploitable exposures, not every open port.

Common Pitfalls in ASM Adoption and How to Avoid Them

• Over-Reliance on Automation Without Human Oversight: Automation is critical, but unchecked queues accumulate false positives. Schedule quarterly audits where security teams validate VETA findings and tune risk models.
• Incomplete Integration with Existing Tools: Siloed ASM data loses urgency. Prioritize API integrations with ticketing and SIEM platforms during onboarding to keep workflows unified.
• Underestimating Scope Creep: Limiting early efforts to a single cloud blindsides hybrid and legacy assets. Begin with a full inventory import, then expand recursively using VETA's global discovery.
• Neglecting Training and Change Management: Teams resist unfamiliar tooling. Run enablement workshops that show how VETA reduces manual spreadsheets and accelerates closure rates.
• Ignoring Privacy and Data Residency: Multinational footprints demand regional storage controls. Use VETA's data residency options and least-privilege OAuth scopes to satisfy GDPR, CCPA, and other mandates.

The VETA Advantage

• Breadth: Global discovery coverage across DNS, certificates, cloud inventories, and web crawling.
• Depth: Exposure intelligence tuned for real attacker TTPs (e.g., leaked Jenkins, unauthenticated Kibana, weak auth portals).
• Speed: Drift detection minutes after asset changes via streaming integrations.
• Actionability: Embedded workflows, ownership metadata, and remediation guidance reduce handoffs.
• Trust: SOC 2 Type II audited, data residency options, and role-based access controls protect sensitive asset data.

Future Trends in Attack Surface Management

• AI-Driven Prioritization: Machine learning models will fuse threat intelligence and exploit telemetry to predict which exposures adversaries will weaponize next.
• Zero Trust Integration: ASM data will feed policy engines that dynamically restrict access for exposed services until remediation completes.
• Quantum-Resistant Cryptography Monitoring: As quantum computing matures, ASM platforms like VETA will flag encryption schemes that need PQC migrations.
• Expanded IoT and Edge Coverage: Discovery will extend to distributed edge nodes and IoT fleets, layering device fingerprinting atop traditional asset scans.
• Collaborative Threat Sharing: Industry sharing groups will exchange anonymized exposure patterns to elevate collective defense.

PlaidNox is committed to evolving VETA alongside these trends to ensure sustained value.

Conclusion

Attack Surface Management is no longer optional. It is the only way to keep pace with the rate of digital change, satisfy regulators, and stay ahead of automated reconnaissance. The PlaidNox VETA platform unifies discovery, exposure intelligence, and remediation workflows so enterprises can see—and secure—their entire Internet footprint.

Visit https://veta.plaidnox.com to request a demo or speak with the PlaidNox ASM team.

Appendix: Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between ASM and EASM?

Attack Surface Management (ASM) spans both internal and external surfaces, while External ASM (EASM) focuses strictly on Internet-facing assets. VETA emphasizes external exposures but integrates with internal telemetry to keep context aligned.

How does VETA handle false positives?

The Exposure Intelligence Engine enriches findings with ownership, technology fingerprints, and suppression metadata. Analysts can flag exceptions, and the platform retrains scoring models using that feedback.

Is VETA suitable for small businesses?

Yes. Pricing scales with asset volume, and smaller teams can start with managed workspaces before layering advanced integrations.