January 13, 2026

Introducing External Attack Surface Management (EASM) at Prescient Security

Miriam Riordan · 2 minute read

Most people know Prescient Security for compliance. SOC 2, ISO, HIPAA, etc. That’s often how the conversation starts. But that’s not where our work begins. Security starts with understanding what’s actually exposed. And for many organizations, that answer is less clear than they think.

This is why we’re announcing External Attack Surface Management at Prescient Security.

The Hidden Vulnerability

If you ask most teams whether they know everything that’s reachable from the internet under their name, the answer is usually confident. But when we look closer, during pentests, compliance reviews, or incident response, a different picture often emerges:

A forgotten subdomain from a past project.
A cloud service spun up temporarily and never shut down.
An older system that was retired internally but never fully taken offline.
All still reachable. All technically part of the attack surface. Often unknown to the teams responsible for securing them.
That gap between assumption and reality is what EASM is designed to address.

What is External Attack Surface Management?

External Attack Surface Management isn’t about generating longer asset lists or adding more dashboards. It’s about getting an accurate, current view of what the internet can see today and using that visibility to make informed decisions about what should remain exposed.

For us, EASM is a natural extension of the work we already do. Our pen testers have always approached environments from an outside-in perspective. Our compliance teams regularly uncover mismatches between documented controls and real-world exposure. EASM brings that perspective into an ongoing, structured view of external exposure.

What is External Attack Surface Management?

EASM Reflects What's Live Right Now

Instead of relying on asset inventories that become outdated almost immediately, EASM reflects what’s live right now, like Domains, IP addresses, cloud resources, exposed services etc, things that matter when someone is actively scanning your environment. Visibility alone, however, is not the goal.

Once exposure is clear, the next challenge is ownership. Who is responsible for this system? Why does it exist? Should it still be publicly accessible? These are the questions that often slow teams down, but they are also where meaningful risk reduction begins.

The Core Benefit of External Attack Surface Management for Organizations EASM Launch Blog Post

Most external exposure isn’t the result of negligence. It’s the result of growth, speed, and decisions that made sense at the time. EASM helps teams revisit those decisions and reduce exposure intentionally, rather than reacting after something goes wrong. And unlike point-in-time assessments, EASM keeps pace with change by continuously reflecting what’s actually exposed as environments evolve, assets appear and old systems linger.

Compliance tells you whether controls exist. Pen testing shows how those controls can fail.
EASM helps you understand what’s exposed in the first place. And for many organizations, that clarity is long overdue.