What is an attack surface?
An attack surface refers to all the potential entry points an attacker could exploit to gain access to a system, network, or data in an unauthorized manner. Because an attack vector can be any way or method a threat actor uses to illegally access an enterprise’s IT infrastructure and extract data, the more attack vectors an enterprise’s IT environment features, the broader its attack surface is.
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Types of attack surfaces
There are three types of attack surfaces:
Physical
Digital
Social engineering
An organization's attack surface isn't just about the organization's networks and software—it extends to physical assets and even the people in the company. Understanding the different types of attack surfaces is crucial because each one presents unique risks and requires tailored strategies for risk assessment and mitigation.
Physical attack surface
An enterprise’s physical attack surface includes hardware like computers, mobile devices, external storage drives, laptops, and IoT machinery. The physical attack surface can be exploited via insider attacks, stolen equipment, poor disposal of decommissioned hardware, negligence from remote teams, and many other dangerous scenarios.
Social engineering attack surface
The social engineering attack surface specifically refers to the human element, including the susceptibility of individuals within an organization to manipulation and deception. Unlike physical and digital vulnerabilities, which often involve exploiting technical weaknesses in systems, social engineering attacks capitalize on human emotions, cognitive biases, and lack of awareness to trick users into compromising security.
Digital attack surface
The digital attack surface, on the other hand, poses more complex risks because of the global adoption of cloud computing technologies. The digital or cloud attack surface includes misconfigurations, poor IAM (identity access management), publicly exposed resources, and unofficially commissioned resources (known as shadow IT).
What are the components of a cloud attack surface?
As businesses increasingly rely on cloud infrastructure, understanding its key components becomes essential for them to be able to identify vulnerabilities and strengthen security defenses. The cloud attack surface consists of all the entry points threat actors can exploit in a cloud environment. These points may be:
Application program interfaces (APIs)
APIs are software that act as connective tissue between multiple heterogeneous cloud applications. They’re the secret to the seamlessness of cloud environments.
Unsecured and unencrypted APIs are a significant contributor to an enterprise’s attack surface. One example: In 2023, an API vulnerability in Honda’s e-commerce platform resulted in compromised customer data, dealer records, and other sensitive documents.
Third-party applications
Enterprises expand their attack surface by commissioning third-party applications and tools, including media players, web browsers, and collaboration tools. Unnecessary or unused software can introduce security vulnerabilities, increasing the risk of exploitation.
Rather than eliminating third-party collaboration altogether, businesses should acknowledge the inherent risks and take proactive steps to mitigate them. This includes vetting vendors for security compliance, enforcing strict access controls, and continuously monitoring third-party integrations for vulnerabilities.
Databases and storage buckets
Businesses leverage storage solutions from cloud service providers (CSPs) to warehouse their data. Although data storage is quick and convenient with these solutions, there are security implications to consider.
For instance, companies need to delineate which security responsibilities belong to them and which belong to their CSPs. Whenever businesses fail to do this, it can result in catastrophic security events. For example, misconfigured and publicly exposed storage buckets can quickly lead to a data breach.
Data
Almost all exploits of an enterprise's attack surface aim to exfiltrate data. Securing data storage containers is insufficient. The data itself needs protection to minimize the attack surface. Some common techniques to protect the data layer in an attack surface include encryption, role-based access controls (RBAC), and backups.
Containers and container management platforms
Containers and container orchestration systems like Kubernetes are becoming widespread in modern cloud-based IT environments.
The rise in container culture introduces many deeply embedded risks in infrastructure-as-code (IaC) files in Dockerfiles, Kubernetes YAML manifests, and Helm charts. Container environments bring numerous benefits but can add to an enterprise’s attack surface if left unchecked.
Users
It’s easy to focus on the intricacies of cloud topologies and forget who is navigating these spaces. Users or “digital identities,” both human and machine, are a dynamic and high-risk component of an enterprise’s attack surface.
Over-privileged access and weak passwords and credentials are some of the risks associated with users in cloud environments. Cybercriminals can leverage these risks to gain unauthorized access, move laterally within a business's IT environment, exfiltrate data, and corrupt internal systems.
Code repositories
The rise in high-octane DevOps environments has added to enterprise attack surfaces. Code repositories are potential vectors for threat actors to exploit. This could be due to security flaws, shadow code, and secret or sensitive code. It could also be because of accidentally published early-iteration code in public repositories.
Furthermore, companies that haven’t integrated security early in their software development life cycles (SDLCs) are likely to have a much broader attack surface to reckon with.
Artificial intelligence (AI)
AI is becoming an integral part of cloud operations, as it helps streamline and simplify processes while boosting efficiency. However, it also introduces new security risks, as AI tools, pipelines, and even shadow AI can serve as entry points for attackers.
In June 2023, our team of researchers discovered that Microsoft unintentionally exposed 38TB of sensitive data when sharing AI research via misconfigured SAS tokens in Azure. This incident underscores the growing need for robust security measures to protect AI assets from unauthorized access and data leaks.
What is attack surface management?
Attack surface management is a combination of tools, processes, and practices that assess, analyze, and remediate potential vulnerabilities across an organization's attack surface. Attack surface management adopts an outside-in vantage point to understand how threat actors might leverage weak spots in an organization's attack surface to conduct malicious activity.
This third-party perspective is vital because it's almost impossible to construct optimal defenses without knowing which perimeter threat actors want to breach, how they plan on doing so, and what they intend to do once they are within the enterprise's cloud environment.
Common attack vectors
Attackers use various methods to exploit an organization's attack surface, often targeting the weakest links in security defenses. Understanding these common attack vectors can help businesses proactively strengthen their cloud environments and reduce risk.
| Attack Vector | Description | Threatened attack surface |
|---|---|---|
| Phishing and social engineering | Attackers manipulate individuals into divulging sensitive information or granting access to systems through deceptive emails, messages, or calls. | Endpoints, user accounts, email systems |
| Malware and ransomware | Malicious software is deployed to compromise systems, encrypt files, or exfiltrate data, often demanding ransom payments. | Cloud workloads, databases, storage systems |
| Credential theft and brute force attacks | Attackers steal or guess login credentials through phishing, keylogging, or automated brute-force attempts. | User accounts, IAM systems, cloud management consoles |
| Exploiting misconfigurations | Security flaws in cloud services, storage settings, or IAM policies leave systems vulnerable to unauthorized access. | Cloud services, storage buckets, IAM policies, databases |
| Zero-day vulnerabilities | Attackers exploit undiscovered or unpatched software vulnerabilities before a fix is available. | Operating systems, applications, cloud services |
| Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks | Cybercriminals intercept and manipulate data exchanged between users and services, often over unsecured networks. | Network traffic, APIs, user sessions, authentication mechanisms |
| Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks | Attackers flood networks or applications with traffic, causing service disruptions and downtime. | Network infrastructure, cloud services, web applications |
| API attacks | Exploiting weak or exposed APIs to access sensitive data, disrupt services, or escalate privileges. | API endpoints, cloud platforms, microservices |
| Supply chain attacks | Attackers compromise third-party software, dependencies, or CI/CD pipelines to infiltrate an organization. | Software dependencies, CI/CD pipelines, vendor integrations |
| Insider threats | Employees, contractors, or compromised accounts intentionally or unintentionally expose sensitive data or systems. | Internal systems, data repositories, privileged accounts |
Key steps in the attack surface management lifecycle
A typical attack surface management lifecycle is comprised of three steps:
1. Attack surface analysis
First, you need to know what you’re working with. Attack surface analysis means mapping out every cloud asset—APIs, storage buckets, third-party integrations, AI tools, containers, and digital identities—that attackers could exploit. The more connected your cloud environment, the more potential weak spots exist.
Start by taking a full inventory of your IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS services, prioritizing high-risk assets that need immediate attention. This visibility helps security teams strengthen defenses before attackers find an entry point.
2. Attack surface monitoring
Cloud environments change constantly, making real-time monitoring a must. New workloads, API updates, and misconfigurations can introduce fresh vulnerabilities, so keeping an eye on your attack surface is critical.
Use tools like activity logging, continuous vulnerability scanning, and risk-based prioritization to catch potential threats before they escalate. Don’t forget third-party integrations—vendors can unintentionally expand your attack surface if their security isn’t up to par.
3. Attack surface reduction
Once you know your risks, it’s time to shrink your attack surface. This means removing unnecessary entry points, refining security controls, optimizing API configurations, and enforcing zero-trust measures like multi-factor authentication (MFA) and just-in-time (JIT) access.
Eliminate redundant accounts, decommission outdated applications, and apply network segmentation and encryption to limit exposure. Since attackers constantly evolve their tactics, this step isn’t a one-time fix—it’s an ongoing process that keeps your defenses strong.
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Six strategies to manage your attack surface
Managing your attack surface means staying ahead of threats, reducing unnecessary exposure, and maintaining full visibility into your cloud environment. These six strategies help security teams keep risks in check.
1. Continuously discover and classify all assets
Cloud environments change constantly—new workloads, APIs, and user accounts are added and removed all the time. Without ongoing asset discovery, shadow IT, abandoned resources, and exposed assets can go unnoticed.
Automated asset discovery tools map out the entire attack surface, ensuring every cloud resource is accounted for and classified based on risk.
2. Prioritize risks based on exploitability and impact
Not all vulnerabilities are equally dangerous—attackers go after the most exposed and weakest points first. Security teams should focus on high-risk, easily exploitable vulnerabilities rather than spreading efforts too thin.
Using adversary simulation frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK and real-world threat intelligence helps teams understand which threats matter most and allocate resources effectively.
3. Minimize exposure by enforcing security policies and controls
Misconfigured IAM settings, excessive user privileges, and open network access expand the attack surface. Security policies should limit permissions to only what's necessary and enforce strict access controls, following the principle of least privilege (PoLP).
Zero-trust authentication, JIT access, and continuous audits of cloud configurations reduce unnecessary exposure and make lateral movement harder for attackers.
4. Integrate attack surface intelligence with security operations
Attack surface insights should be fed directly into SIEM, SOAR, and XDR platforms to improve security monitoring and response. When attack surface data is correlated with threat intelligence, detection and response times improve.
Automated remediation workflows can close security gaps faster, reducing reliance on manual intervention.
5. Actively monitor and detect threats targeting your attack surface
Threat actors are always looking for weaknesses, so real-time monitoring is essential. Behavior analytics, risk-based alerting, and anomaly detection help catch threats before they escalate.
Security teams should track unauthorized access attempts, unusual API activity, and misconfigurations, which are often early signs of an attack.
6. Validate defenses with continuous attack simulations and testing
Security tools and policies can become outdated as threats evolve. Without regular testing, gaps go unnoticed. Red teaming, penetration testing, and adversary emulation uncover weaknesses before attackers do.
Simulated real-world attack scenarios ensure security controls work as intended, identify misconfigurations, and strengthen incident response strategies.
How Wiz can help you monitor, analyze, and reduce your attack surface
As we’ve seen, a comprehensive attack surface management life cycle has three steps: analysis, monitoring, and reduction. These steps can be incredibly challenging to optimize with siloed tools and legacy security approaches. Wiz’s security solution can help you manage your attack surface at a speed and level of efficiency that can outpace the tools and tactics of threat actors.
Get a demo now to see how Wiz can help you reduce your attack surface, fortify your cloud environments, and accelerate digital success.
