Security Strategy, Plan, Budget

FBI Director Christopher Wray speaking in Washington, D.C. Today’s columnist, Tom Richards of GroupSense, writes that the FBI reported a 400% increase in ransomware attacks during the height of the pandemic. Richards argues that this rise has a dramatic impact on a company’s risk profile and one reason why security ratings scores are not always useful.

Though the term Attack Surface Monitoring (ASM) doesn’t specifically refer to external threats, that’s what this market currently focuses on. In short, products in this category aim to catalogue and help manage an organization’s exposed assets.

Due to this being a new category, we focused our time on understanding the market, how to categorize it and exploring each product’s set of features.

RiskIQ is a great example of where the freemium model works best. They’ve built an essential research tool, so even if someone wasn’t interested in their digital risk protection product, when a new offering like Illuminate comes along, RiskIQ has another opportunity to inform and upsell freemium users on new products.

AlphaWave is targeting the risk analysis and prioritization end of the ASM market. The product collects information on assets and attempts to identify issues and vulnerabilities. These findings are then prioritized for the customer.

Bit Discovery has planted its stake in trying to build the most comprehensive inventory of IP-based assets exposed to the Internet.

Phobos approached building Orbital from the perspective of both a security consultant and the client, receiving the results of an assessment.

ImmuniWeb occupies an interesting space in the ASM market. While it offers many features only seen in some of the more complex offerings, pricing is SMB-friendly.