How CTEM Helps Cyber Teams to Become More Proactive

Software, infrastructure, and third-party services change far faster than quarterly audit cycles, which increases the risk of data and infrastructure exposure.

In the UK, just over four in ten businesses and three in ten charities identified a cyber breach or attack in the last 12 months alone. Phishing is dominant, and larger organisations are hit more often. ENISA’s latest threat landscape lists availability attacks, ransomware, and data threats as the top three cybersecurity concerns across Europe. It can be a lot to keep up with.

Today’s security teams need a way to keep exposure data current and to turn that data into work that actually removes attack paths. Continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) serves as the basis for that cadence, as it runs as a repeatable loop. CTEM enables teams to scope what matters, discover the real attack surface, prioritise by reachability and likely impact, validate in the way an attacker would, and route fixes through the tooling you already use.

For developer-led organisations, the advantage is straightforward. Rather than noisy findings and notifications, CTEM provides a framework for reproducible work items so you close meaningful paths quickly instead of growing a backlog of low-signal tickets.

A Developer’s Framework for CTEM

A simple way to operationalise CTEM is the DEPTH method: Discover, Evaluate, Prioritise, Test, Hand-off. It maps neatly to normal delivery rhythms without creating unnecessary complexity and bureaucracy.

Discover. Keep a continuous inventory of what is actually reachable from the internet, one service at a time. This can include domains and subdomains, API gateways and endpoints, object stores, edge devices, certificates, and identity integrations. Treat identity posture as exposure in its own right. Stale tokens, over-broad roles, default credentials, and unaudited service accounts are just as exploitable as a common vulnerability and exposure (CVE).

Evaluate. Attach signals so triage is deterministic. For each finding, store the CVE, the exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) probability, inclusion in CISA’s known exploited vulnerabilities (KEV) database, authentication state, blast-radius indicators (data sensitivity, privilege reach), and a small proof of reachability (for example, a curl output, test URL, or certificate details). Keep the schema compact enough to sort in an issue tracker.

Prioritise. Use an ordering rule that anyone can apply. Internet-exposed items that are KEV-listed go first. Next, rank by EPSS probability (higher first). Break ties by unauthenticated reachability and then by data sensitivity. Maintain a parallel queue for identity and configuration faults that open paths even without a CVE. Publish this rubric at the top of the board to aid in decision-making.

Test. Prove exploitability and control efficacy in the environment you run today. Keep checks short and scriptable. Examples are a curl or HTTPie snippet for an insecure direct object reference (IDOR) or weak-auth path; a signed URL to demonstrate public object-store access; a one-liner to verify default credentials on a lab-scoped edge device; or, an OpenSSL command to confirm certificate or TLS posture. Ensure the scripts are idempotent for retesting after a fix, and save the artifacts along with the ticket. For APIs, align test cases with the common failure modes you already track.

Hand-off. Convert proof into change using the rails you already have. Standardise the ticket: owner, environment, link to reachability proof, EPSS score, KEV status, fix approach, rollback plan, and the exact retest command. Route through change control and CI/CD. Close only when the retest passes in the target environment. For software-supply-chain items, ensure policy and build pipelines reflect secure-development practices rather than ad-hoc checks.

Integration Touchpoints

In security operations and monitoring, enrich alerts with exposure context so events touching known high-risk assets are ranked higher by default. If a relevant CVE enters an actively exploited list, adjust priority accordingly.

In change management, add a simple control to the template. A CTEM checkbox stating “retest script attached and passing” is useful here, so that evidence is required at approval rather than after deployment.

In the SDLC, treat exposure checks like any other quality gate: keep validation scripts in the same repository as your IaC and application code, run them post-deploy in staging, and schedule safe, read-only checks against production endpoints where appropriate.

This keeps evidence versioned, reproducible, and close to the code. For third-party and open-source exposure, track both the upstream fix and your local mitigation. Use a clear baseline for secure development, and surface objective health and provenance signals in builds rather than relying on informal judgements.

Common Failure Modes

Tool sprawl without ownership. Adding scanners without assigning triage and closure grows the backlog and erodes trust. Keep outputs flowing into the same issue tracker, and apply SLAs only to items with proof and reachability so effort tracks risk, not volume.

Counting patches instead of paths removed. If a CVE is marked fixed but an object store remains public, the path still exists. Make “closed and retested” your lead metric, not “PR merged.”

Ignoring identity. Weak authentication, stale tokens, and overly broad roles create routine lateral movement. Keep identity items in the same queue and run them through the same DEPTH flow as infrastructure and code.

Enabling a Proactive Approach

CTEM replaces ad-hoc reaction with an operating rhythm that ties signals to fixes. Discovery jobs refresh the exposed surface for one service. Triage applies a simple ordering rule that combines KEV status and EPSS probability with reachability. Validation turns each top item into a short and scriptable proof. Mobilisation converts that proof into a change ticket with an owner, rollback plan, and an exact retest command.

CI runs the same script after the change and fails if the path still exists. The board shows “attack paths removed” and “time to risk reduction” as the lead metrics.

The result is a closed loop. On a rolling basis, you learn what’s exposed, you choose the highest-likelihood, highest-impact items, you prove them, you fix them, and you retest automatically. That is what “proactive” looks like. This means less time waiting on alerts and more time closing off the routes attackers actually use.

With CTEM, the goal is simple: a smaller exposed surface, fewer reachable attack paths, and faster time to risk reduction. CTEM, implemented with DEPTH and wired into delivery and operations, keeps those outcomes on a timetable that teams can sustain, without adding complexity or creating a parallel process.

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