What is attack surface management?
Attack Surface Management (ASM) is the practice of continuously discovering and evaluating everything your organization exposes to the public internet. It answers the foundational question every security team needs to know:
“What can an attacker actually reach — and how dangerous would it be if they tried?”
Classic ASM tools focused only on external discovery: mapping domains, IPs, and services that respond on the internet. But cloud environments change too quickly for static maps to be useful. Modern ASM has evolved far beyond simple scanning.
Modern ASM goes beyond discovery
Today’s ASM platforms don’t just list exposed assets — they validate whether those exposures are real and meaningful by layering in internal context such as:
Reachability: Is the asset actually accessible from the internet, or is it a false-positive artifact?
Exploitability signals: Does the exposure reveal functionality or configuration that could realistically be abused?
Identity & permissions: What privileges does the exposed service have if compromised?
Data access: Could the asset lead to sensitive information or critical systems?
Ownership: Which team is accountable for remediating the exposure?
This shift transforms ASM from a discovery tool into a system that highlights exposures with genuine business impact — the ones attackers are most likely to target.
Why ASM matters in cloud environments
Cloud infrastructure is fluid. New services appear, ephemeral workloads spin up and down, and misconfigurations can open internet pathways instantly. Traditional pen tests or quarterly audits can’t keep pace with that rate of change.
ASM fills that gap by:
Monitoring your external footprint continuously
Flagging exposures the moment they emerge
Validating which exposures represent credible entry points
Providing the context needed to prioritize fixes
This continuous, context-driven visibility gives security teams a real-time picture of their external risk — something manual testing alone can’t provide.
How ASM differs from vulnerability scanning
Vulnerability scanners tell you what’s weak on the systems you already know about.
ASM tells you what’s visible — including the things you didn’t know about.
It’s the continuous “external radar” every modern organization needs before deeper security assessments can be effective.
Expose risks no other tool can
Learn how Wiz Cloud surfaces toxic combinations across misconfigurations, identities, vulnerabilities, and data—so you can take action fast.
What is penetration testing?
Penetration testing is a manual, adversarial assessment where trained security professionals simulate real-world attacks to determine whether vulnerabilities can actually be exploited. Instead of simply identifying weaknesses, pen testers attempt to prove impact — showing how an attacker could gain access, move laterally, and reach sensitive systems.
A typical pen test includes:
Reconnaissance: Collecting information about the target environment
Enumeration & scanning: Identifying potential entry points
Exploitation: Attempting to gain unauthorized access
Post-exploitation: Exploring lateral movement and privilege escalation
Reporting: Documenting the attack chain, evidence of compromise, and remediation steps
What pen testing uniquely provides
Pen testing excels at uncovering issues that automated tools struggle with, such as:
Chained vulnerabilities that require human reasoning
Business logic flaws
Authentication and session weaknesses
Social engineering vectors
Complex exploitation paths that require creativity
Attack surface management vs. penetration testing: Core differences
ASM and penetration testing both strengthen security, but they solve fundamentally different problems. Understanding those differences makes it clear why modern organizations need both.
1. Breadth vs. depth
ASM: Broad, continuous visibility across all internet-facing assets
Pen testing: Deep, manual assessment of a specific system, app, or environment
2. Continuous vs. point-in-time
ASM: Runs nonstop, catching exposures the moment they appear
Pen testing: Happens periodically — annual, quarterly, or after major changes
Cloud environments shift too fast for episodic testing alone.
3. Automated validation vs. manual exploitation
ASM: Automatically validates whether exposures are reachable and potentially exploitable using safe, non-invasive techniques
Pen testing: Actively attempts exploitation, chaining weaknesses to demonstrate real-world compromise
4. Business impact at scale vs. targeted proof
ASM: Uses identity, data, and configuration context to prioritize exposures with real business impact
Pen testing: Produces high-fidelity evidence and attack narratives that leadership can understand
5. Coverage vs. scoping effort
ASM: No scoping — it monitors everything exposed by default
Pen testing: Requires defined scope, rules of engagement, scheduling, and prep
AWS Vulnerability Management Best Practices [Cheat Sheet]
This 8-page cheat sheet breaks down the critical steps to fortifying your AWS security posture. From asset discovery and agentless scanning to risk-based prioritization and patch management, it covers the essential strategies needed to safeguard your AWS workloads.
How attack surface management and penetration testing work together
ASM and penetration testing aren’t competitors — they play different roles in the same security lifecycle. When they’re combined, you get the scale of automation and the depth of human expertise.
ASM keeps constant watch; pen testing dives where it matters
Modern ASM continuously maps your external attack surface, validates which exposures are genuinely reachable, and highlights the ones that are likely exploitable based on identity, data, and configuration context. This gives teams a real-time picture of where their most meaningful risks are emerging.
Pen testing then takes those high-risk areas and assesses them with human creativity: chaining weaknesses, bypassing controls, and demonstrating real-world impact.
ASM finds the doors and windows. Pen testing shows what an attacker could do after getting inside.
ASM informs smarter, more targeted pen tests
One of the biggest challenges in penetration testing is scoping — deciding what to test. Traditional scoping often misses unknown or unintentionally exposed assets, meaning pen testers spend valuable time on discovery instead of exploitation.
With continuous ASM:
Unknown assets become visible before tests begin
High-risk exposures are surfaced automatically
Pen testers start with a prioritized list of likely attack paths
Testing effort is focused where it matters most
This means you get dramatically more value out of every pen test.
Pen testing validates and extends ASM findings
Pen testers use ASM data as a baseline but go deeper:
Confirming exploitability
Identifying chained vulnerabilities
Testing authentication and authorization flows
Demonstrating lateral movement
Validating defensive controls
Producing evidence-backed attack narratives
Where ASM identifies risk, pen testing proves impact.
The continuous loop
Together, ASM and pen testing create an iterative, continuously improving cycle:
ASM catches new exposures and shifts in your external footprint
Pen testers validate the most critical scenarios
ASM monitors those assets long after remediation
Pen tests adjust scope based on ASM’s latest findings
This ensures you don’t just fix issues — you keep them fixed.
Wiz’s approach to attack surface management
Most ASM tools stop at discovery. They tell you what’s exposed, but not whether the exposure is real, exploitable, or connected to anything that matters. Wiz takes a different approach: external visibility only becomes useful when it’s paired with deep, cloud-aware context.
Wiz ASM continuously maps all internet-facing assets across your cloud and hybrid environments, and then automatically evaluates each exposure through the lens of your internal environment:
Is it truly reachable from the internet?
Does the asset have vulnerabilities or misconfigurations that make it exploitable?
What identities or permissions does it inherit if compromised?
What data or services could it reach inside your environment?
Who owns it and can fix it?
By correlating external exposures with cloud configuration, identity, data sensitivity, and network reachability, Wiz surfaces the exposures that form real attack paths — not just long lists of open ports or public endpoints.
Because this context is captured in one Security Graph, teams get a single, prioritized view of the exposures that matter most. Ownership is clear, remediation is routed automatically, and risk reduction becomes measurable.
In other words, Wiz ASM isn’t just about finding what’s publicly visible.
It’s about understanding which exposures represent meaningful business risk — and fixing them before attackers can take advantage.
Surface the exposures that matter most
Detect critical exposures that span across your cloud, code, SaaS, APIs and more.
