XM Cyber Takes Top Spot in Frost & Sullivan’s Automated Security Validation Radar

Or, Symbiotic Security – A Tale of Why Automated Security Validation and Continuous Threat Exposure Management Need Each Other 

If you’re looking for the latest analyst guidance into Automated Security Validation (ASV) solutions, look no further!

Frost & Sullivan just released the 2024 version of their Frost Radar™: Automated Security Validation, and XM Cyber was named “the undisputed leader” (their words, not ours), by achieving the highest score on both the Innovation and Growth index. This is an amazing achievement and we are delighted to have come out on top. 

For Innovation, Frost & Sullivan looked at scalability, R&D, product portfolio, megatrends leverage, and customer alignment to evaluate vendors’ innovation capabilities. On the Growth index, they looked at market share, revenue growth, growth pipeline vision & strategy, and sales & marketing.

“XM Cyber is the undisputed leader in the 2024 Global Automated Security Validation Frost Radar™. Validation is a core element of a comprehensive Continuous Exposure Management program and XM Cyber’s scalable approach to innovation has ensured that the product stays aligned to customer needs of improving security posture while reducing risk, while rapidly evolving to address future challenges”

-Swetha Krishnamoorthi, Industry Principal at Frost & Sullivan 

ASV is a critical component of modern cybersecurity programs. ASV solutions provide the attacker’s perspective of exposures and equip security teams with a prioritized list of the highest-impact risks to critical assets to speed remediation efforts. In large enterprises, ASV provides the scale to cover growing attack surfaces effectively, while in mid-sized organizations, ASV reduces the manual effort required by smaller teams. 

In fact, to illustrate the growing importance, multiple compliance frameworks such US Department of Defense and its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program, the European Union’s National and Information Security (NIS2) Directive and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR https://gdpr.eu/) now advocate for continuous assessment and validation of the enterprise.

Only One Piece of the Security Puzzle

Importantly though, relying solely on ASV can leave coverage gaps that an adversary can use to compromise critical assets. It focuses on specific threat scenarios, rather than providing a comprehensive view of an organization’s security posture. Moreover, without an assessment of the attack surface, and the exposures that put the organization at risk, validation provides incomplete information to security teams. Finally, some ASV solutions deployed in production environments can put business operations at risk or leave behind breadcrumbs that an adversary could leverage at a later time.

The Continuous Threat Exposure Management Framework (CTEM): A Fitting Home for ASV

ASV is part of the solution, but by incorporating it into a broader framework, cybersecurity teams can better make use of the benefits. Over the last 2 years, The Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) framework has shown itself to be a highly effective approach to reducing risk and improving security posture, offering a proactive approach to cybersecurity, encompassing a strategy that goes far beyond vulnerability identification.

Based on 5 stages that feed into, and inform each other, CTEM surfaces and actively prioritizes whatever most threatens your business and gives Security and IT teams the insights to more rapidly address the biggest risks. Gartner coined the term in 2022 and listed it as the #2 Strategic Tech Trend for 2024.

Here’s a quick look at the 5 stages of the framework:

• Stage 1 – Scoping

Understanding your attack surfaces and how important each asset is to your business.

• Stage 2 – Discovery

Assessing each asset for potential exposures and analyzing how the exposures correlate to particular risks.

• Stage 3 – Prioritization

Exposures are analyzed to weigh the level of known threat they’ve posed ‘in the wild’ and the importance of the assets directly impacted. This step, referred to as exposure assessment, is crucial because large organizations uniformly find that there are far more exposures than they’ll ever be able to fix.

• Stage 4 – Validation

Looking at how attacks can occur and the likelihood of their occurrence. Naturally, this is where ASV fits into the CTEM framework.

• Stage 5 – Mobilization

Ensuring all business functions are on the same page and understand their role and responsibilities within the context of the program.

(For more information about each stage, check out the following blogs: Scoping, Discovery, Prioritization, Validation, and Mobilization.)

 XM Cyber – Doing CTEM Before CTEM was a Thing 

At XM Cyber, we’ve been doing CTEM since before it was called CTEM. With a strong understanding that traditional vulnerability management approaches were too limited to address the issues that put today’s organizations at risk, Exposure Management was born. It’s a methodical approach that enables risk reduction by proactively assessing and addressing risks, and minimizing financial losses, operational disruptions, and reputational harm. It also provides essential attacker insight to grant clarity to Security and IT teams on the risk reduction value of any given exposure remediation, so they can be confident that they are fixing the right things, with a means to regularly measure their progress in reducing risk. 

Many solutions aim to address one or more parts of the processes that need to be conducted as part of any Exposure Management program. CTEM, in itself, isn’t a solution; as mentioned before, it’s a framework, leveraging the aforementioned 5 stages. The holistic approach of CTEM enables organizations to optimally implement Exposure Management, by identifying and remediating potentially problematic areas before attackers can exploit them.

This is why we’re the leader in this space, delivering the most comprehensive approach to the framework. Our Continuous Exposure Management platform covers all 5 phases and enables Security and IT teams to more effectively collaborate and reduce cyber risk. ASV is the focus of the Radar and where XM Cyber took the top spot, but without effective exposure assessment, validation efforts won’t deliver their full benefits.  

Better Together – Implementing ASV Within CTEM 

By combining Automated Vulnerability Assessment with a broader, continuous exposure assessment, organizations can achieve a more comprehensive and resilient security posture. The integration between ASV and Exposure Assessment, as part of a CTEM program enables better prioritization of threats, more efficient remediation, and ultimately, a stronger defense against cyberattacks.

XM Cyber’s recognition as the top vendor in Frost & Sullivan’s ASV Radar underscores our commitment to providing a holistic security solution through Continuous Threat Exposure Management. By integrating ASV within the CTEM framework, organizations can get a continuous and comprehensive approach to cybersecurity that meets the requirements of today’s security challenges.

Read the report here