As decision-makers beef up their budgets for cybersecurity tools, many have their eye on Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management (CAASM) solutions - and for good reason. Providing connectivity for remote workers, enabling more mobility and supporting digital transformation has required IT teams to deploy and protect more devices and software than ever before. As such, the attack surface is expanding rapidly as organizations build out their technology infrastructure to accommodate new business needs.
Meanwhile, cybercriminals are becoming increasingly adept at circumventing traditional security measures, and they're deploying sophisticated techniques to quickly and expertly infiltrate corporate networks. The combination of a larger attack surface and savvier cybercriminals means IT security teams have their work cut out for them: Cybercrime has increased by 600% since the onset of the pandemic and, by 2025, will cost companies worldwide about $10.5 trillion annually.
But before a CAASM strategy can be executed, IT teams must know what devices they need to protect - otherwise, it's impossible to ensure that all security vulnerabilities and gaps are addressed. Unfortunately, about 70% of organizations don't know what assets they have. There are several for reasons for this.
A changing IT landscape
Not only is the attack surface expanding, it's also changing. Today's enterprise technology estate comprises a wide variety of assets - IT, IoT, Operational Technology (OT), cloud assets and virtual machines. IoT devices in the homes of remote workers are prime targets for cybercriminals who use them to tunnel into enterprise networks.
Outdated inventories
Manual processes for tracking technology assets across the enterprise are time-consuming and error-prone. Spreadsheets are outdated as soon as they're complete, and, often, teams simply don't have time to update them because they're busy addressing security and performance issues and putting out fires. With the estate expanding rapidly, it's impossible to keep a complete or accurate inventory.
Shadow IT
In order to get around waiting for the busy IT department to fill a request, departments may take it upon themselves to install and use unsanctioned assets - hardware and software that IT knows nothing about. This practice is common, resulting in the existence of a lot of network-connected assets that aren't protected and could be susceptible to an attack.
Data silos
While inventories are often created for individual use cases, for example, a data migration, a compliance audit, a software upgrade or other scenario, these are often completed in isolation. Not only does this lead to a lot of duplicate work, but inconsistencies between data sources makes ensuring the proper policies and procedures are enforced impossible. Rather than collecting IT asset data to meet the criteria of specific IT scenarios, we believe IT Asset Management should be a scenario-independent endeavor, with the goal of creating a single source of truth.
These challenges inhibit an organization's ability to have full visibility across the IT estate - or protect it from an attack.
Lansweeper for Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management
Gain complete visibility of your technology assets.
Why Lansweeper for CAASM
Lansweeper is uniquely positioned for effective CAASM, because it takes a different approach than other solutions.
No agents or credentials needed
Lansweeper combines an agentless deep scanning engine with credential-free device recognition (CDR) technology to automatically and continuously discover and recognize all IT assets across your infrastructure. From servers and desktops to laptops, VMs, OT, IoT, shadow and rogue devices, and all of the software and operating systems that run on the network, Lansweeper detects and identifies them in minutes. You don't have to install an agent on any device to get started, and Lansweeper works flawlessly, without needing credentials.
More timely, accurate data
Unlike other CAASM solutions that must ingest IT asset data from various sources which may or may not be accurate, Lansweeper extracts asset data from the "bare metal." Because the data is more reliable and accurate, results improve - security teams can uncover all vulnerabilities - outdated or unpatched software, encryption issues, weak passwords, misconfigurations and more - and gain immediate access to the information they need to fix potential issues and reduce risk.
Better insights
With Lansweeper, users can visualize and analyze data easily, using pre-build dashboards or customizing their own. They can also share findings easily by leveraging built-in reporting features, or by integrating Lansweeper with Power BI, for a complete 360-degree view of the technology estate.
Seamless integrations
Lansweeper is open and interoperable by design, which means you can integrate it with other systems across your tech stack, including CMDB, ITSM, SIEM and SOAR tools. Not only does this eliminate data silos, it cuts operational overhead and simplifies complex investigations. Plus, Lansweeper data can be leveraged across all of those business-critical tools to satisfy data needs for various use cases.
Lansweeper for Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management
Gain complete visibility of your technology assets.
