Attack surface discovery: see what attackers see.
We map every asset you expose to the internet, including the ones nobody remembers, and show which of them give an attacker a way in.
You cannot defend what you do not know
Organizations accumulate exposure: forgotten subdomains, test environments left online, cloud storage, remote access gateways, services brought in by suppliers or acquisitions. Attackers scan the internet continuously and find these assets within hours.
Attack surface discovery builds an outside-in inventory of that exposure, the view an attacker starts from, and checks each asset for the weaknesses that matter. It is often the first phase of a red team or threat-led test, and a valuable recurring exercise on its own.
Attack Surface Discovery Map & analyze your exposure
- External attack surface mapping
- Exposure discovery across domains and services
- Internet-facing infrastructure analysis
- Cloud exposure assessment
- Shadow IT identification
- Remote access point discovery
Outcomes
- Visibility into exposed assets
- Reduced external attack surface
- Risk prioritization
- Actionable remediation
Outside in, five phases.
We start from what is public and work inward, as an attacker would.
Seeds and scope
From company names, domains and IP ranges we agree what belongs to you and how deep discovery may go.
Passive discovery
Certificate transparency logs, DNS, internet-wide scan data and public code repositories reveal assets without touching them.
Active enumeration
We fingerprint hosts, services and technologies, including cloud storage and remote access points, within the agreed rules.
Exposure analysis
Each asset is checked for known vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, leaked credentials and unnecessary exposure, then ranked by risk.
Inventory and remediation
You receive a verified asset inventory, a prioritized list of exposures and recommendations to reduce the surface.
An attacker's method, documented.
Discovery follows the reconnaissance techniques catalogued in MITRE ATT&CK (tactic TA0043) and the information gathering section of the OWASP testing guide. It supports the asset and vulnerability management requirements of ISO/IEC 27001, NIS2 and DORA.
BackBox AI correlates sources, groups assets by owner and technology, and flags the exposures that deserve a tester's attention first.
Frameworks and references
Attack surface discovery, common questions.
How is attack surface discovery different from a vulnerability assessment?
A vulnerability assessment examines assets you already know about. Attack surface discovery first finds the assets: it answers what is exposed, including what is missing from your inventory, and then checks it for weaknesses.
Do you need access to our systems?
No. Discovery works from the outside, starting from public information such as domains, certificates and DNS records. We only need you to confirm which assets belong to you and how far active testing may go.
How often should the attack surface be mapped?
Exposure changes with every deployment, cloud account and supplier. A full mapping once or twice a year, plus monitoring of new assets in between, keeps the inventory close to reality.
What is shadow IT, and why does it matter?
Shadow IT is technology run without the security team's knowledge: a forgotten test server, an unmanaged SaaS account, a cloud bucket created for a project. It is rarely patched or monitored, which makes it a favorite entry point.
Is attack surface discovery the same as attack surface management?
Discovery is the core of it. Attack surface management adds continuous monitoring of the inventory; we run discovery as an assessment and can repeat it at agreed intervals, so the inventory stays current between full mappings.