Full Report
Relying on an endpoint-centric approach to exposure management can leave you with blind spots that increase risk. You need to see your environment like an attacker does.Key takeaways:Long remediation cycles and difficulty prioritizing risk are significant challenges for security teams. Exposure management capabilities bolted onto existing security tools result in dashboard fatigue and manual processes that slow response time. Unified exposure management gives teams the context and intelligence they need and integrates into existing systems of record to speed remediation times.How do you scale with the threat landscape? That’s one of the greatest challenges facing security organizations.An attacker’s entry point can be a critical vulnerability on a public-facing server, a severe misconfiguration in the cloud or an overprivileged permission in an identity system. Threat actors only need to exploit a single misconfiguration or vulnerability to gain a toehold into an environment, where they quickly pivot to living off the land techniques, using legitimate tools to perform lateral movement and privilege escalation. They’re leveraging a broad attack surface that includes AI, cloud environments, web applications, APIs, identity systems, operational technology (OT) and IoT. And overwhelmed security teams are over-rotating on an “assumed breach” mentality.To understand the scope of the challenge, consider this: From 1999 to 2019, there were 124,000 registered CVEs tracked by MITRE. From 2019 to 2024 that number nearly doubled to 240,000 and it’s currently at 300,000.Security tool vendors with expertise in a specific area, such as endpoint detection and response (EDR), may offer add-on vulnerability management or exposure management services to their offerings. It may seem easy to add these capabilities onto an existing deployment. But relying on such offerings to manage a complex environment can result in blind spots that increase risk.In order to scale with the threat landscape, security teams need to be able to see their environment just as an attacker does.Yet, 42% of respondents to a recent Tenable webinar poll combine multiple tools and a homegrown approach to secure their environments, while another 12% rely primarily on an endpoint security vendor’s tools. Source: Tenable webinar poll of 57 respondents, Beyond the Endpoint: Exposure Management That’s Proactive, October 1, 2025 Modern attackers rarely focus on just one part of the infrastructure, and an endpoint-centric view creates dangerous blind spots that attackers can exploit. The Tenable webinar Beyond the Endpoint: Exposure Management That’s Proactive outlined the real-world gaps created by an endpoint-centric security approach, including missed exposures, reliance on vendor coverage, detection delays and compliance difficulties.“You want to take an ‘assumed breach’ mindset? That doesn’t mean you have to have an ‘accept breach’ mindset,” said John Hendley, VP of Cybersecurity for Coalfire, a Tenable MSSP partner, during the webinar. “We don’t need to make it easier for folks to try to get in and do nefarious things.”Hendley noted that he sees a lot of dashboard fatigue among customers who cobble together multiple tools and then struggle to attain a clear understanding of where they are most at risk.“There are two constants in security: time and context,” said Raymond Carney, senior director, Tenable Research. “A lot of times we tend to think of security as a purely technical sort of acumen we’re applying. But to be successful we have to elevate it to business terms.” This requires understanding the potential impact a given vulnerability can have on the business, as well as being able to contextualize that for C-level executives who want to know if the business is at risk.An endpoint-centric approach to security can’t provide the context organizations need to proactively reduce risk. Siloed tools not only increase dashboard fatigue, they make it difficult to integrate remediation workflows into IT systems of record such as Jira and ServiceNow.More than a third of webinar attendees (38%) cited long remediation cycles as their biggest day-to-day challenge, while 31% have difficulty validating and prioritizing risk. Source: Tenable webinar poll of 63 respondents, Beyond the Endpoint: Exposure Management That’s Proactive, October 1, 2025 “What’s great about Tenable is that because it has such rich integrations, it can feed that data into your systems of record, where your data lives, where your teams go and fix things,” said Hendley. “That’s a really powerful force multiplier.”5 factors that set Tenable exposure management apartA unified exposure management platform like Tenable One gives security teams the context and intelligence they need to reduce risk across the complex attack surface. Here are five key ways Tenable One stands out:Data sources: Many endpoint vendors pull in data from other sources, which can introduce lag times that can slow remediation efforts. The Research Special Operations team in Tenable Research analyzes over 50 trillion data points, allowing Tenable to provide coverage for over 40% more Windows server vulnerabilities and 16% more CVEs than competitors. An average of four plugin feeds are published daily.Transparency: Tenable plugin pages clearly show what’s covered in the current feed, what’s in the pipeline and the audit and compliance coverage available.Vulnerability intelligence: Tenable Research is constantly looking at observable evidence in the threat landscape, providing customers with the analyses and contextualized exposure intelligence required to manage risks to critical business assets. Their goal? Cut through the noise and deliver critical intelligence about the most dangerous cyber threats emerging right now. Since the beginning of 2024 our advisory content, vulnerability watches and emerging data has preceded the publication of the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog by an average of eight and a half days.Prioritization: Being able to boil down the 300,000 published CVEs to the 800 flagged as critical by the Tenable Vulnerability Priority Rating and further to the 17 or 20 a year that are most impactful helps you focus in on the areas that we’re most likely to be subject to breach and the potential impact on the business.Asset management: The Tenable platform is designed to help you identify the systems you didn’t know you had, so you have an attacker’s view of your environment. This is more important than ever with the increase in AI usage and the growth of shadow AI.ConclusionEndpoint-centric security is insufficient for the modern attack surface. Relying on EDR vendor tools can leave you with critical blind spots. Modern attackers exploit cloud misconfigurations, web applications, APIs, identity systems and OT/IoT, all of which endpoint tools were not built to see or assess.Overcoming security challenges requires moving beyond dashboard fatigue and manual processes. Integrating a single exposure management platform into an organization’s existing systems of record (e.g., ServiceNow, Jira) automates ticket creation and routing, transforming data into efficient, trackable remediation workflows.Effective exposure management makes it possible to home in on what matters most by providing explainable, contextual intelligence based on actual threat actor activity so you can focus on the highest-impact risks. Tenable's RSO team leverages massive data analysis to provide superior vulnerability coverage and crucial advanced warning of days or weeks on emerging threats, compared to relying on slower external sources like the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) or the CISA KEV.A unified exposure management platform gives you a contextual view of risk that encompasses vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, overprivileged identities and other weaknesses so you can proactively identify and close gaps across the entire attack surface.Learn moreView the on-demand webinar, Beyond the Endpoint: Exposure Management That’s Proactive
Analysis Summary
Ah, an excellent topic. The transition from endpoint-centric security (like EDR) to a holistic Unified Exposure Management approach is critical for modern risk reduction.
Based on the context provided, here are the actionable security recommendations and implementation guidelines organized for your consulting practice.
# Best Practices: Transitioning from EDR to Unified Exposure Management
## Overview
These practices address the limitations of relying solely on Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions. They focus on adopting a Unified Exposure Management (UEM) platform to gain comprehensive visibility across the entire attack surface, including cloud, identity, web applications, OT/IoT, and prioritizing risks based on actual threat context, moving beyond dashboard fatigue to actionable remediation workflows.
## Key Recommendations
### Immediate Actions
1. **Inventory all potential security tools:** Catalog all existing security solutions, specifically noting where current EDR solutions do not provide coverage (e.g., cloud infrastructure, identity platforms, OT environments).
2. **Identify Critical Blind Spots:** Immediately investigate areas known to be missed by EDR tools, such as public-facing web applications, misconfigured cloud environments (IaaS/PaaS), and privileged/over-provisioned identities.
3. **Establish Threat Information Stream:** Begin correlating internal vulnerability data with external threat intelligence feeds to prioritize remediation based on active threats, rather than just CVSS scores alone.
### Short-term Improvements (1-3 months)
1. **Initiate Data Aggregation Strategy:** Select a unified platform capable of ingesting data from existing security tools (using connectors) alongside its native sensors to build a centralized asset inventory.
2. **Implement Exposure Prioritization Logic:** Configure the selected platform to use contextual intelligence (based on actual attacker activity) to weight and rank identified exposures, shifting focus away from volume toward exploitability and business impact.
3. **Integrate with Workflow Systems:** Connect the unified security platform directly to established systems of record (e.g., ServiceNow or Jira) to automate ticket creation and routing for remediation tasks.
### Long-term Strategy (3+ months)
1. **Achieve Full Attack Surface Visibility:** Ensure the UEM platform provides continuous coverage across all major vectors: Vulnerability Exposure, Cloud Exposure (CNAPP/CIEM), Identity Exposure, and OT/IoT Exposure.
2. **Mature Security Hygiene Program:** Formally integrate UEM output into the continuous security hygiene monitoring framework, ensuring regular reporting on risk reduction across consolidated metrics.
3. **Establish Proactive Risk Communication:** Utilize the unified risk context provided by the platform to generate clear, explainable reports for business stakeholders, tying security efforts directly to optimal business performance metrics.
## Implementation Guidance
### For Small Organizations
- **Focus on Consolidation:** Prioritize tools that offer layered functionality (Vulnerability Management, basic Cloud Exposure assessment) to minimize tool sprawl while maximizing visibility.
- **Leverage Native Capabilities:** If utilizing a specific vendor's EDR, investigate whether they offer complementary modules (like basic vulnerability scanning) to bridge immediate gaps without major vendor changes initially.
- **Automate Basic Workflow:** Use vendor-provided direct integrations (connectors) to automatically create remediation tasks in a simple ticketing system (e.g., Trello or shared inboxes) if full integration with enterprise tools is resource-prohibitive.
### For Medium Organizations
- **Formalize Connector Strategy:** Dedicate resources to vetting and implementing connectors for all major security point solutions (e.g., WAF, identity providers) to ensure full data ingestion into the UEM platform.
- **Define Risk Thresholds:** Establish clear, quantifiable service-level objectives (SLOs) for addressing exposures based on the contextual prioritization scores generated by the platform.
- **Introduce Specialized Scans:** Implement targeted scanning capabilities for cloud-native environments (CIEM, CNAPP) and operational technology (OT) assets if present.
### For Large Enterprises
- **Mandate System of Record Integration:** Enforce the integration of the UEM platform with enterprise-grade systems like ServiceNow for centralized governance, tracking, and auditing of remediation throughput.
- **Develop Advanced Analytics Use Cases:** Leverage advanced features like GenAI analytics or sophisticated exposure analytics to handle massively scaled environments and create predictive models for risk exposure.
- **Adopt Early Warning Processes:** Implement processes to utilize vendor-supplied advanced threat intelligence (which may preempt NVD/CISA publication dates) for *days or weeks* of advanced warning on emerging threats, initiating emergency patching/mitigation cycles.
## Configuration Examples
*(The provided text does not include specific CLI commands or detailed configuration steps for popular tools, but focuses on product *capabilities*. The guidance below describes the *functionality* that must be configured.)*
1. **Third-Party Data Integration:** Configure **Connectors** within the UEM platform to ingest data streams from existing tools. *Specific action: Ensure API tokens are securely managed and connectivity tests pass for integrations covering IAM, Cloud Posture Management, and existing vulnerability scanners.*
2. **Contextual Prioritization Engine:** Enable and tune the risk-prioritization algorithm to factor in external threat intelligence data rather than relying solely on vulnerability severity. *Specific action: Validate asset criticality tags are accurately mapped to exposure data to influence the final risk score.*
3. **Automated Remediation Routing:** Configure governance workflows to automatically assign remediation tickets based on asset ownership or exposure type. *Specific action: Set up routing rules: Cloud misconfigurations route to DevOps teams; critical endpoint vulnerabilities route to IT operations via the integrated ticketing system.*
## Compliance Alignment
- **NIST CSF:** Aligns strongly with **Identify** (Asset Management, Risk Assessment) and **Protect** (Vulnerability Management capabilities) functions. UEM supports continuous monitoring required by a mature risk management strategy.
- **ISO 27001/27002:** Supports requirements for ongoing vulnerability management, asset inventory maintenance, and risk treatment selection.
- **CIS Controls:** Directly addresses the need for an exhaustive asset inventory (Control 1) and continuous vulnerability management (Control 7), shifting focus to treating exploitable risks across the entire environment.
## Common Pitfalls to Avoid
- **Accepting Dashboard Fatigue:** Do not treat the UEM platform as just another dashboard. If remediation workflows are not fully automated or tracked externally, the centralization effort will fail to reduce noise.
- **Ignoring Non-Endpoint Assets:** Continuing to trust EDR as the primary source of security truth and neglecting cloud infrastructure, identity systems, and OT/IoT gaps.
- **Relying Only on Static CVSS Scores:** Ignoring the power of contextual data and threat actor activity; focusing remediation efforts only on vulnerabilities with the highest theoretical score rather than those currently being actively exploited.
- **Poor Data Normalization:** Failing to properly map and normalize data ingested via connectors, leading to inaccurate asset counts or duplicate remediation tickets.
## Resources
- **Vendor Documentation:** Refer to official documentation for specific configuration details on Tenable One Connectors for data ingestion.
- **Threat Intelligence Feeds:** Integrate known reputable sources (while acknowledging that vendor-specific intelligence may offer faster alerts) to inform prioritization logic.
- **ServiceNow/Jira Integration Guides:** Consult documentation for secure API setup and workflow creation between the security platform and existing IT Service Management (ITSM) tools.
- **Webinar Reference:** View the on-demand webinar, "Beyond the Endpoint: Exposure Management That’s Proactive," for deeper strategic context.