One of the primary challenges posed by the cloud is the simple fact that environments are becoming larger — and more distributed. Large (and even mid-sized) enterprises may be managing hundreds of Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud accounts. Since each of those accounts is effectively its own data center, understanding how to manage, control and protect them is critical. Just scoping that task can be a substantial undertaking: Organizations need visibility across their digital environments, which means conducting discovery on both assets and potential vulnerabilities. Once vulnerabilities have been identified, security teams can begin the process of prioritizing them.  

This is, in part, why the practice of continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) has become popular with organizations seeking to make long-term improvements to their security posture. As cloud environments become more sprawling and difficult to manage, the number of potential vulnerabilities expands alongside them. The larger the environment, the larger the volume of exposures — which means if organizations don’t implement proper exposure management, they can quickly find themselves overwhelmed with more threats than they can reasonably manage. That makes the ability to quickly validate and prioritize threats increasingly critical, enabling organizations to tackle the most pressing threats first and avoid becoming an easy target for attackers.  

Lack of Knowledge is a Serious Threat to Cloud Security

The rapid expansion of cloud services has provided organizations with a wide range of highly valuable tools — but it has also put security teams in a difficult position. Security engineers simply don’t have the time or resources to familiarize themselves with the vast number of cloud services available today. In the past, security engineers primarily needed to understand Windows and Linux internals, Active Directory (AD) domain basics, networks and some databases and storage solutions. Today, they need to be familiar with hundreds of cloud services, from virtual machines (VMs) to serverless functions and containers at different levels of abstraction. Unfortunately, it’s hard to protect systems if you don’t have a thorough understanding of how they work.  

That means security teams rely heavily on their vendors to provide the knowledge they need. Tools like cloud security posture management (CSPM), cloud workload protection platforms (CWPP) and cloud-native application protection Platforms (CNAPP) can help, but security teams need to know they are working as intended. They cannot afford to take the vendor’s word for it — they need to be able to validate them. Organizations that aren’t sure how (or even if) their cloud security solutions work are putting themselves at grave — and unnecessary — risk. It’s great to have security vendors you can trust, but when it comes to security, “trust but verify” is a good motto to live by.  

It’s also important to note that cloud environments are particularly susceptible to misconfigurations. Security teams often primarily focus on assessing the performance of their preventative security controls, searching for weaknesses in their ability to detect attack activity. But this overlooks the danger posed by misconfigurations, which are not caused by bad code, software bugs, or malicious activity.  That means they don’t fall within the definition of “vulnerabilities” that organizations typically test for—but they still pose a significant danger. The term “exposure” has become increasingly popular among security experts as a unified way to classify misconfigurations, vulnerabilities and other bad practices associated with cloud containers. It has led to the rise of “exposure management” solutions that take a broader approach to threat assessment than traditional vulnerability management tools.  

Exposure Management and Why Validation Matters 

Exposure management practices like CTEM aren’t just looking for signs of active exploitation—they’re looking for anything attackers can potentially leverage for their own gain. With cloud environments growing larger by the day, an organization might have hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of misconfigurations scattered across their environments — not to mention unpatched systems, software bugs, poorly secured applications and other dangers. Most exposure management solutions can scan for this information, and maybe even provide mapping — but without validation, organizations have no idea how effective the preventative measures they have in place actually are. This is what makes validation such a critical part of the CTEM process. 

For example, a misconfiguration that opens a clear path to a database of sensitive information or a way for the attacker to further escalate their privileges should be a top priority. On the other hand, a misconfiguration that is effectively covered by compensating security controls can be safely bumped down the list. By engaging in security validation, organizations can simulate actual attack activity to see whether a given exposure can actually be exploited, or whether attackers will simply run into a dead end. By identifying which exposures pose an actual threat, security teams can prioritize which are top-level concerns and avoid wasting valuable time addressing exposures that don’t actually pose a danger.  

That can make a major difference for today’s security teams, many of which have limited resources and manpower with which to operate. Patching systems and changing configurations can be a tedious and time-consuming process — one that security teams may not need to go through if a firewall or other control is preventing attackers from exploiting the exposure in question. Instead, they can focus their efforts where they can have the greatest impact, dramatically improving both the efficiency and effectiveness of the security team’s operations as well as the organization’s overall security posture. 

Staying One Step Ahead of Attackers is Critical 

Securing the cloud isn’t just about having the right solutions in place — it’s about determining whether they are functioning correctly. But it’s also about making sure attackers don’t have other, less obvious ways into your network. Exposure validation is critically important for modern organizations, which can no longer afford to focus exclusively on traditional vulnerabilities. By identifying and validating vulnerabilities, misconfigurations and other potential threats to cloud environments, organizations can ensure they are not leaving low-hanging fruit available for attackers to exploit. With attackers growing bolder by the day, security teams need every advantage they can get. By adopting CTEM practices and prioritizing security validation, today’s organizations can stay one step ahead.