Attack Surface Management vs. Vulnerability Management
Apr 03, 2024
Cybersecurity / Penetration Testing
Attack surface management (ASM) and vulnerability management (VM) are often confused, and while they overlap, they're not the same. The main difference between attack surface management and vulnerability management is in their scope: vulnerability management checks a list of known assets, while attack surface management assumes you have unknown assets and so begins with discovery. Let's look at both in more detail. What is vulnerability management? Vulnerability management is, at the simplest level, the use of automated tools to identify, prioritize and report on security issues and vulnerabilities in your digital infrastructure. Vulnerability management uses automated scanners to run regular, scheduled scans on assets within a known IP range to detect established and new vulnerabilities, so you can apply patches, remove vulnerabilities or mitigate any potential risks. These vulnerabilities tend to use a risk score or scale – such as CVSS – and risk calculations. Vulnerability sca