Quick refresher: What is attack surface management?
Attack surface management is the process of finding, inventorying, and monitoring all internal and internet-facing assets and possible entry points that attackers could exploit.
Your attack surface includes every poorly encrypted API, invoicing system with access to your network, misconfigured cloud bucket, insecure web form, abandoned server with unpatched software, and identity with excessive permissions that can expose critical assets.
So why do you need a separate tool to manage your attack surface? Why isn’t traditional vulnerability management (VM) enough? ASM spans both external and internal views. External ASM (EASM) emphasizes an attacker’s outside-in perspective, continuously discovering internet-facing assets and exposures. Internal ASM – often called CAASM (Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management) – leverages cloud APIs to discover and correlate internal assets, misconfigurations, and identity relationships. This goes beyond plain asset scanning to map exposure paths and prioritize what matters most to your business.
Expose the Risks That Matter Most
Learn how Wiz Cloud surfaces toxic combinations across misconfigurations, identities, vulnerabilities, and data—so you can take action fast.
Top 7 attack surface management tools for 2026
Benchmarking the hundreds of attack surface management tools on the market against the essential capabilities discussed above is no easy feat. So we’ve compiled notable solutions, their capabilities, and G2/Gartner external attack surface management rankings to help.
In no particular order, these top 7 solutions are a good place to start:
1. Wiz
Description: Wiz Attack Surface Management (ASM) is a cloud-native security platform that delivers full-spectrum attack surface management through an agentless Security Graph approach.
Capabilities:
Continuously discovers every cloud, AI, SaaS, on-prem, and API asset, their relationships, and attack paths in real time
Prioritizes risks by exploitability, asset criticality, exposure, and business context to cut through noise fast
Identifies the right owner for remediation, from infrastructure and applications to business units and developers
Unique features: Eliminates blind spots, simulates attacker behavior, maps attack paths, correlates risks with identity and misconfigurations, and provides AI-guided remediation.
Top pick for: Teams seeking unified attack surface management that prioritizes exploitable risks, reduces alert fatigue, and accelerates remediation across complex environments
Edge: Wiz is the first and only platform to unify posture, identity, and vulnerability context across the entire cloud and CI/CD pipeline in an at-a-glance Security Graph, providing complete code-to-cloud visibility.
| Rating source | Aggregated rating | Review count |
|---|---|---|
| G2 | 4.7 | 744 |
| Gartner | 4.7 | 300 |
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2. CyCognito external attack surface management (EASM)
Description: An EASM platform that methodically uncovers internet-facing assets and exposures
Capabilities:
Often paired with platforms like Wiz to extend internal cloud visibility with an external attacker’s perspective. CyCognito’s strength lies in its seedless discovery engine, which uncovers both managed and shadow assets without relying on cloud provider APIs.
“Seedless” discovery engine finds both managed and shadow assets—without relying on cloud provider APIs
Best for: Organizations seeking validation at scale who want to complement their code-to-cloud visibility with an external attacker's view of their internet-facing assets
Edge: Attacker-centric methodology (via continuous DAST scanning) plus exhaustive reconnaissance capabilities
| Rating source | Aggregated rating | Review count |
|---|---|---|
| G2 | 4.3 | 5 |
| Gartner | 4.7 | 39 |
3. Palo Alto Networks Cortex Xpanse
Description: Offers external attack surface mapping across connected systems and unknown exposures as part of the Cortex platform
Capabilities:
Discovers active risks by incorporating threat intelligence scans of the entire internet
Provides built-in playbooks for reducing the external attack surface
Ideal for: Enterprises that are already running Palo Alto solutions or those seeking tight security operations integration
Edge: RDP exposure management and active internet-facing asset discovery
| Rating source | Aggregated rating | Review count |
|---|---|---|
| G2 | — | — |
| Gartner | 4.2 | 38 |
4. Mandiant Advantage Attack Surface Management
Description: Mandiant Advantage ASM (part of Google Cloud’s Mandiant unit), built to assess risks to organizations’ exposed assets (like their domain, networks, and SaaS accounts)
Capabilities:
Focuses on the adversary’s viewpoint, leveraging Google Cloud’s native security features
Discovers and manages asset risks based on pre-specified business outcomes
Ideal for: Organizations with Google Cloud–based environments who want to focus on an attacker’s perspective
Edge: Mandiant IOC detection, fused with benign payload-based exploitability probes and Google Cloud–native integration
| Rating source | Aggregated rating | Review count |
|---|---|---|
| G2 | 4.5 | 1 |
| Gartner | 4.2 | 32 |
5. Tenable Attack Surface Management
Description: Part of Tenable’s exposure management lineup; blends ASM and vulnerability management for unified visibility
Capabilities:
Hooks directly into Tenable’s vulnerability database and research for up-to-date risk context
Adds technical and business context to CVSS for deep exposure scoring
Good fit for: Organizations that prioritize quantifying vulnerabilities and threats to their external attack surface
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| Rating source | Aggregated rating | Review count |
|---|---|---|
| G2 | 4.0 | 1 |
| Gartner | 4.6 | 626 |
6. Rapid7 Surface Command
Description: A tiered suite of tools offering EASM, plus vulnerability management for premium users
Capabilities:
Strong on blast radius mapping for external exposures
Endpoint-to-cloud attack surface mapping
Good choice for: Organizations that want to scale into higher-tier plans like Exposure Command Ultimate, which expands remediation and SOAR integration.
Edge: Tiered pricing accommodates businesses with smaller budgets
| Rating source | Aggregated rating | Review count |
|---|---|---|
| G2 | 3.8 | 11 |
| Gartner | 4.4 | 22 |
7. Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management (Defender EASM)
Description: Microsoft’s native ASM offering, directly integrated into the Defender suite and the Azure ecosystem
Capabilities:
Uses discovery seeds to continuously inventory assets and model the attack surface
Correlates assets, permissions, and vulnerability findings to generate attack surface insights
Ideal for: Organizations running Microsoft 365 and Azure who are looking for out-of-the-box compatibility
Edge: Offers natural-language–assisted query generation within the Defender ecosystem
| Rating source | Aggregated rating | Review count |
|---|---|---|
| G2 | 4.3 | 16 |
| Gartner | 4.3 | 153 |
Wiz's approach to attack surface management
Wiz treats internal and external exposures as a single, interconnected problem rather than separate security domains. This unified model shows how risks originate, propagate, and converge across your entire environment.
Modern cloud environments are distributed, dynamic, and deeply interconnected. Wiz's approach reflects this reality by mapping relationships between assets, identities, and attack paths in a single Security Graph that gives teams complete context for prioritization and remediation.
Here are the pillars of Wiz's approach:
Wiz ASM gives you full visibility into your attack surface, highlighting the risks that truly matter. No noise, just true exposure reduction.
The Wiz Security Graph: Wiz maps relationships between assets, identities, and attack paths to increase alert fidelity while letting you quickly see the context behind the attack surface. Simply put, the Wiz Security Graph visualizes how attackers would exploit your attack surface and shows you at a glance why a prioritized risk is truly critical.
Robust threat data integration: Aside from connecting with key vulnerability databases and integrating live threat intelligence, Wiz actively hunts threats and vulnerabilities in cloud services, third-party libraries, and GenAI models.
Wiz also integrates attack frameworks like MITRE for an up-to-date view of attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures.
Agentless approach: Our agentless-first approach delivers seamless deployment, fast time to value, and dynamic discovery of internal and internet-facing ephemeral workloads and shadow assets.
Integration across the development lifecycle: With our out-of-the-box CI pipeline integration, IDE visibility, IaC scanning, and runtime protection, Wiz is known for our solid support for shift-left security.
Remediation prioritizes clarity and precision: Accelerate time to fix with automated fixes and guided remediation at the exact line of code causing the issue.
Curious how Wiz can help reduce your internal and external attack surface? Get a free attack surface assessment to see prioritized risks and fastest remediation paths.
Expose the Risks That Matter Most
Learn how Wiz Cloud surfaces toxic combinations across misconfigurations, identities, vulnerabilities, and data—so you can take action fast.
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