Another cybersecurity acronym? Yes, but this one could well change the way you approach IS security.
In the current context of accelerated digitalization of business activities, information systems are rapidly expanding and becoming more complex. For CISOs and SecOps teams, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain an exhaustive, real-time view of the various digital assets for which they are responsible. This is precisely where CAASM technologies come in.
What is CAASM? What are its advantages and key applications? Here's what you need to know about this emerging cybersecurity technology.
CAASM: definition
CAASM (pronounced[kazœm]) stands for Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management. "Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management or "Digital Asset Attack Surface Management". The CAASM approach encompasses and goes beyond IS mapping.
CAASM is an emerging discipline or technology in the field of cybersecurity. Its aim is to provide security teams (Sec), IT teams (Ops) and their managers (RSO, RSSI) with an exhaustive, contextualized list of the various cyber assets that make up the information system: how many assets there are, which assets are the most critical, what are the potential points of entry into the IS, and so on.
What are CAASM solutions for?
CAASM gives you a complete view of your attack surface, enabling you to understand the connections between different assets, identify vulnerabilities and determine the potential impact of a cyber attack. The ultimate challenge? Better protect and defend your IS. The use of CAASM tools contributes to an organization's security policy.
CAASM solutions help IT teams to regain control of their IS, to better understand it in order to better defend it. Here are the main benefits of using CAASM solutions:
- Compile a comprehensive inventory of digital assets (internal, external, in the cloud) and their interconnections.
- Identify the most critical assets essential to maintaining the business.
- Visualize up-to-date, real-time data in a single view.
- Identify vulnerabilities and prioritize remedial action.
- Secure the various IS entry points.
- Improve identity and access governance.
- Become aware of possible IS attack scenarios.
- Improve incident response phases by increasing speed and efficiency.
- Streamline the collaboration and productivity of IT and security teams by offering everyone the same level of information.
Visualization of digital assets and attack surface
Today's information systems have become complex, with more and more different layers and overlays, ramifications and interconnections between the various elements. The rise of digital transformation in organizations, the massive use of the cloud and APIs have a lot to do with this.
As a result, it's difficult to have an exhaustive, up-to-date view of the various assets in your IS. Depending on the company's size and activities, "digital assets" or "cyber assets" can number in the hundreds, or even thousands: physical equipment, servers, networks, applications, users and administrators with their different levels of privilege, etc.
This data is often scattered across a number of tools (vulnerability scanners, log sinks, EDRs, etc.), but rarely correlated, let alone rendered in a readable form. This situation even creates a paradox: how can you properly protect an IS without keeping in mind the various assets that make it up, and the connections between these same assets? Far from being a simple inventory, CAASM responds to the need for security teams to better visualize their IS and its potential entry points, in order to better control and protect their attack surface.
The benefits of CAASM for IS governance: contextualization and data sharing
Accessing IS data remains a major challenge for today's security teams. Each business has its own perception of the IS, but none of them can boast a global vision based on contextualized data. This is precisely what CAASM technologies enable: to provide analysts with the context they need to better understand the connections between different cyber assets, in order to prioritize the security actions to be taken.
CAASM technologies enable us to rethink IS governance by improving information sharing between the various professions involved. Data relating to digital assets is rarely centralized, let alone shared by all the players involved in IS security, from operational teams to RSO and RSSI.
CAASM solutions make it possible to aggregate, map and analyze all relationships between cyber assets. This strengthens IS security governance. Gone are the silos of data, replaced by the management of a single attack surface for digital assets.
Enhanced protection with CAASM
After the question of IS visibility comes the question of vulnerability management: what are the different vulnerabilities affecting the IS and what are their potential impacts, how can operational teams prioritize the remediation of different vulnerabilities, etc.? CAASM provides answers to all these questions.
If this technology is very useful upstream of a potential crisis, it is even more so when the crisis occurs, to organize the incident response phase: follow the path taken by the attacker, cut off data flows or isolate machines to prevent the attack spreading, rapidly apply palliative measures, etc. In this kind of case, CAASM technology plays a kind of command center role, saving both time and efficiency. In such cases, CAASM technology acts as a kind of command center, saving time and increasing efficiency.
Compliance management and digital identity management: two major use cases
By automating data collection and analysis, CAASM tools make it easier to verify compliance posture, which can become part of SecOps teams' daily routine. Compliance auditing is a laborious process that can slow down a SecOps team. By using a CAASM solution, this compliance is checked as and when it is implemented, thus avoiding a bottleneck in SecOps operations during the audit period. This makes it easier to identify and correct any deviations from current standards.
The governance of digital identities and accesses is another crucial issue that CAASM solutions can address. Which user has access to which resources? Are all current authorizations justified? Are external users properly registered? Have we ensured that off-board users no longer have access to the company's information system? An ongoing inventory of user identities and rights enables the detection of any authorization problems.
Would you like to proactively manage your digital assets with a CAASM tool like OverSOC? Then contact us.
