IONIX’s Approach to Exposure Management

Proactive External Exposure Management

IONIX provides an external exposure management solution designed to continuously reduce external threats and improve mean time to remediate (MTTR) for organizations. The solution addresses what we refer to as the “four vectors of exposure complexity,” which are:

  1. Number of Assets
    Modern organizations possess a vast number of internet-facing assets across their attack surface, creating significant blind spots.
  2. Rate of Change
    On average, around 5% of an organization’s assets undergo changes (such as software upgrades or configuration adjustments) every month, making it challenging to keep track of vulnerabilities.
  3. Volume of Vulnerabilities
    An increasing number of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) are disclosed each year. In 2024 alone, more than 40,000 new CVEs were disclosed—over 100 per day—making it difficult for organizations to prioritize and remediate effectively.
  4. Speed of Attackers
    Attackers are rapidly exploiting newly disclosed vulnerabilities. In 2022, it took them about 32 days to weaponize an exploit; today, it can take as little as 5 days, significantly enlarging the window of exposure.

The IONIX External Exposure Management Solution

IONIX’s proactive platform continuously discovers, pinpoints, and validates all internet-facing, exploitable vulnerabilities within an organization. It analyzes context and dependencies to streamline remediation efforts. A robust solution in this space must:

  • Provide broad coverage across the entire attack surface.
  • Deliver sharp focus on what truly needs fixing by validating true exposures.

To accomplish this, IONIX incorporates the following critical capabilities:

  1. Comprehensive Security Assessment
    • Identifies open ports, OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities, modern web attacks, and misconfigurations.
    • Tailors security tests to the specific asset type (e.g., web servers, mail servers, etc.).
  2. Exploitability Validation
    • Assesses reachability and integrates threat intelligence on exploits that are active in the wild.
    • Validates whether a vulnerability is actually exploitable, drastically reducing noise.
  3. Effective Prioritization
    • Considers severity, asset importance, blast radius, and real-world exploit usage.
    • Groups and clusters issues to speed remediation.
  4. Streamlined Remediation
    • Provides clear, step-by-step remediation instructions (Action Items).
    • Integrates with common ticketing systems (e.g., Jira, ServiceNow) for operational efficiency.
    • Offers “Active Protection” technology that can automatically remediate certain third-party or “dangling” assets.

How IONIX Works

  1. Discovery
    IONIX conducts a robust, non-intrusive discovery process that maps the organization’s attack surface from an external, attacker-like vantage point. This includes:
    • Assets managed directly by the organization.
    • Assets managed by vendors (the digital supply chain).
    • Potentially vulnerable third-party dependencies that could lead to compromise.
    • IONIX scans thousands of internet parameters and can also integrate with cloud environments to identify relevant assets quickly and comprehensively.
  1. Inventory & Classification
    Once assets are discovered, IONIX inventories each one, noting its type, software versions, and any known (common) vulnerabilities.
  2. Dynamic Security Testing
    IONIX then performs a thorough security assessment on each asset, checking for issues such as:
    • Open ports.
    • OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities.
    • Modern web attacks and misconfigurations.
    • These tests are customized to the asset type and are performed continuously as the environment changes.
  1. Validated Findings
    IONIX goes beyond simple detection by validating exploitability through:
    • Reachability tests – can this asset be reached from the outside and does it have compensating controls in place?
    • Actionable exploit intelligence (public exploits, active attacks in the wild).
    • This significantly reduces false positives and ensures security teams focus on genuine threats.
  1. Prioritization & Remediation
    IONIX ranks issues based on severity, asset criticality, and potential blast radius. The system combines vulnerabilities into clusters to streamline remediation. Detailed remediation steps (Action Items) are provided, which can be:
    • Sent to ticketing systems (Jira, ServiceNow, etc.).
    • Automated in specific scenarios via IONIX’s Active Protection feature.
    • Action items that cluster remediation actions together to send to the specific team that can apply fixes.
    • Specific features for subsidiary views and actions, making it easy to see relevant views for specific teams.

Key IONIX Differentiators

  1. Completeness of Coverage
    • Discovers 30–50% more assets than competing solutions.
    • Maps infrastructure dependencies thoroughly, including third-party assets that, if compromised, could lead to a breach.
    • Provides clear discovery evidence for every asset.
  2. Validated Exposures
    • Performs in-depth security assessments to confirm exploitability.
    • Integrates with on-premises tools, cloud accounts, and other security solutions for comprehensive context.
  3. Advanced Prioritization
    • Uses “attack path analysis” to understand the potential blast radius.
    • Incorporates real-time threat intelligence (e.g., leaked credentials, active exploits in the wild).
  4. Streamlined Operations
    • Quickly addresses zero-days and newly disclosed vulnerabilities.
    • Remediates third-party dependency issues automatically where possible (Active Protection).
    • Groups and tags action items to reduce friction between security and IT teams.

Real-World Impact

Some of the world’s largest enterprises use IONIX to:

  • Take immediate remediation actions on newly disclosed zero-day vulnerabilities.
  • Identify and prioritize IT hygiene and shadow IT risks.
  • Determine exposures stemming from exploited or vulnerable third-party dependencies.
  • Reduce exposure across subsidiaries and M&A targets.

With a proven track record among global organizations, IONIX stands out as a trusted partner for reducing external exposure and improving overall cybersecurity posture. If you are looking to enhance your external exposure management program, IONIX offers a comprehensive, validated, and operationally streamlined solution to stay one step ahead of today’s attackers.