Attack Surfaces Are Moving Targets: Here’s How to Keep Up

If there’s one thing we’ve both learned after years in cybersecurity, it’s this: nothing stays still for long.

Today’s attackers are evolving faster than ever, thanks to the rise of AI-driven attacks. Meanwhile, our own environments are changing just as quickly. New assets, new users, new connections that are all popping up and disappearing all the time. Cyber exposure management isn’t a one-and-done project anymore. It’s a living, breathing discipline that has to evolve with the world around it. If you’re still thinking of your environment as something static, you’re already falling behind.

Here’s a look at how the game has changed.

Attackers Move Fast And Now They’re Using AI to Move Even Faster

Not long ago, it would take real effort for attackers to customize a phishing campaign or design a brand-new exploit. Now they can produce thousands of unique, convincing attacks in minutes, thanks to AI.  Just this year, a major logistics company was breached when employees received what looked like legitimate emails about new delivery protocols. The emails were customized to each department, written perfectly and packed with malware. Traditional security filters didn’t catch them because no two emails looked exactly the same. Once inside, attackers used IoT scanners to move laterally into sensitive shipping databases.

Attackers are using AI to make attacks faster, smarter, and a lot harder to spot. The security community needs to move just as quickly or preferably faster.

Your Attack Surface Isn’t Just Big, It’s Dynamic

Attack surfaces aren’t what they used to be. It’s no longer just the computers in your office or your servers in a data center. Now it likely includes remote workers, thousands of connected, unmanaged and ephemeral devices and interconnected suppliers, partners, and third-party platforms.  And all of it is constantly changing.

For example, a healthcare provider expanded its telehealth capabilities almost overnight. That meant new remote devices, new apps, new patient portals;  and a lot of new risk. One exposed diagnostic machine, connected without proper controls, became an easy entry point for attackers who later exfiltrated sensitive patient data.

If you don’t have real-time visibility into every connected asset, you’re operating blind.

Attackers Are Exploiting the Chaos

Attackers know that speed creates mistakes, and they’ve built entire playbooks around exploiting change:

• Living-off-the-land – Using your legitimate tools and software against you.
• Supply chain attacks – Finding the weak link among your vendors or partners.
• Credential stuffing – Taking advantage of fast-growing workforces who reuse passwords.

During a supply chain crunch, a global retailer onboarded new suppliers fast. One small logistics company had a poorly secured remote access system. Attackers used it to sneak into the retailer’s network and launch ransomware, causing a multi-day shutdown.

Attackers are looking for the easiest crack to gain entry. Once they find it, they have the keys to go wherever they choose.

How to Tune Your Cyber Exposure Management for a World That Won’t Sit Still

To keep your organization resilient, your security program needs to match the pace of change. Here’s a few best practices you can employ right now:

1. Continuous Asset Discovery

Stop thinking in terms of periodic asset inventories. You need a real-time, dynamic view of every asset, no matter who owns it or where it’s located. Look for agentless and comprehensive asset management and security solutions like Armis that can identify and monitor everything, constantly.

2. Context Matters More Than Ever

Not all devices are created equal. An industrial control system or an MRI machine carries a vastly different risk profile than an intern’s laptop.  Treating them the same leads to poor prioritization. Effective security demands prioritization based on context, business criticality, device type, and actual vulnerability, not just whatever is loudest in your alert queue. A crucial part of this is making sure the right contextual information is available when it’s needed. If that information is trapped in data silos, you can’t expect to build efficient, scalable processes on top. Organizations must prioritize funding projects that break down these silos and correlate critical data now, even if the finer details of how the data will be operationalized are still evolving. Eliminating barriers to context is the foundation for moving quickly and making smarter, risk-driven decisions.

3. Automate Where You Can

Manual response doesn’t cut it when threats and attacks are leveraging AI. Automated policies like isolating risky devices and enforcing segmentation can save you precious minutes to hours during an incident. Predefining actions for certain triggers ensures you’re not scrambling in the heat of the moment.

Even more critically, you can flip the script from reactive defense to proactive security by leveraging AI technology to flag would-be attacks while they are still in the formulation stage. Responding “left of boom”, before an attack is launched, is the gold standard in every sense of the word.

However, automation is only as good as the intelligence driving it. Ensure your sources of threat intelligence come from providers who recognize and track adaptive malware that is crafted by AI that changes hourly. If your data sources can’t detect this new generation of threats, any automation built on top of them will be efficient, but ultimately unsuccessful. In today’s landscape, detecting and adapting to these fast-mutating threats is essential.

4. Don’t Forget Your Supply Chain

Your exposure doesn’t stop at the edges of your digital footprint. Every third-party connection is a potential risk. Continuously assess vendor security, not just once at onboarding. And if you can monitor external connections directly, even better.

5. Keep Security Front and Center with Leadership

Today, cyber exposure isn’t just an IT or technical issue, it’s a full-fledged business risk. Your board and C-suite need regular, understandable updates on what’s happening and why it matters, because at the end of the day, it’s the difference between business resilience and costly downtime. It’s critical to tell the story in business language that translates to revenue impact, regulatory exposure, and customer trust, not just a list of vulnerabilities and patches.

Part of effective communication also means ensuring that the metrics you’re using are still valid. Are you still measuring success based on outdated standards, like hitting SLA targets tied to CVSS scores? (We hope not.) Does your definition of “critical” still make sense in 2025’s threat landscape? Metrics must evolve alongside the environment, or you risk striving toward goals that are increasingly disconnected from what truly matters to your business. In a world of rapid change, outdated measurements can create a dangerous false sense of security.

Conclusion

The reality is, there’s no finish line in cybersecurity. The environment is moving. The attackers are moving. And if we’re standing still, we’re falling behind.

The organizations that succeed are the ones who build security programs that adapt as fast as the world around them. That means full visibility, smart automation, real-world prioritization and the understanding that cyber exposure management isn’t a checkbox, it’s an ongoing ever present process.

At Armis, we’re here to help you light up your environment, stay ahead of threats, and keep your organization safe no matter how fast things move.

The message we leave you with is, “staying dynamic is staying resilient”.