What Are Threat Exposure Metrics?
Threat exposure refers to the total set of risks, vulnerabilities, and attack vectors that could potentially impact an organization’s security posture.
It takes 277 days to identify and contain a data breach
Research showed that, on average, it takes 277 days to identify and contain a data breach. This prolonged exposure significantly increases the risk, especially depending on the type and classification of data that has been exfiltrated. A delayed response enables threat actors to continue breach escalation or move laterally through the network.
Time is money too. According to IBM, data exfiltration costs organizations an average of $5.21 million per breach. Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) helps organizations proactively identify, prioritize, and mitigate vulnerabilities to prevent data exfiltration.
The burning question then is which threat exposure metrics should you prioritize before establishing a baseline for effective and profitable mitigation strategies? In this blog, we’ll outline 14 essential threat exposure metrics you should track and benchmark for success.
5 Benefits of Threat Exposure Metrics
Improved risk visibility
Threat exposure metrics provide clear contextual understanding of risks to reduce the attack surface. Mitigation efforts become more optimized when security teams can prioritize vulnerabilities based on business impact over traditional severity scoring systems. Risk visibility also involves threat mapping to provide security teams a better understanding of an attacker’s tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Business impact translates to tangible cost savings from potentially impacted critical assets, regulatory fines, and other operational disruptions.
Proactive threat mitigation
Threat intelligence can help identify indicators of compromise (IoCs) that an attacker may leverage during an attack. Security teams collect threat intelligence from a variety of sources and correlate the data to correctly identify patterns and trends that may signal an attack in progress. These attack patterns might be traced back to a suspicious IP address or even discovering that sensitive files are missing from their original folders. These patterns can help a threat hunter prevent a ransomware attack by identifying early-stage activities.
Better allocation of resources
Not all threats have the same amount of weight when it comes to triage. For example, privilege escalation in a compromised S3 bucket holding sensitive data should receive more priority to remediate over a low-level system update that doesn’t impact critical infrastructure. Threat exposure metrics also show a return on investment in risk reduction. This ensures that budgets are properly allocated on threats contributing to actual ROI, which can be presented to the board as profitable KPIs to justify cybersecurity investments.
The average recovery time after a ransomware attack is 24 days
Faster incident response times in ransomware attacks
How long does it take to contain a security incident, such as a ransomware attack? The average recovery time after a ransomware attack is 24 days. This includes recovering encrypted data (not always guaranteed to receive), restoring systems to normal operations, and isolating affected systems to prevent further damages. Threat exposure metrics such as Mean Time to Identify (MTTI), Mean Time to Detect (MTTD), and Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) help incident response teams understand the scope of attack and plan mitigation strategies better.
Build more accurate threat profiles
Threat modeling is essential for mapping attack surfaces and building threat actor profiles. Data ingested from a variety of threat intelligence feeds can give research teams enough context to confidently identify attack patterns, track adversary behavior, and correlate indicators of compromise (IoCs) across different threat actors. For instance, a Russian hacktivist group rigging election votes may indicate clear political gain as the primary motive, while an established ransomware gang may seek to maximize profits by deploying ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) kits to entice affiliates into launching widespread attacks.
Open-source threat intelligence provides community-driven support with access to shared knowledge bases, documentation, and real-time updates on emerging vulnerabilities, newly identified attack patterns, and indicators of compromise (IoCs). Security researchers can leverage this data to build detailed threat profiles, analyze attacker motives, and predict potential attack outcomes.
The Essential Threat Exposure Metrics to Benchmark
Here are 14 threat exposure KPIs and other crucial vulnerability metrics that can be implemented regardless of organization type or scope.
Mean Time to Identify (MTTI)
MTTI may be considered the golden threat exposure metric as it describes the average time taken from the moment a security incident or breach occurs. This metric paves the way for security teams to plan mitigation efforts and triage.
Mean Time to Acknowledge (MTTA)
MTTA measures the average time taken for a security team to acknowledge an alert after it has been generated. This metric tracks how long it takes from the moment an alert is raised to when security teams recognize and respond to the potential threat. MTTA is also important for establishing transparency and trust among customers.
Mean Time to Contain (MTTC)
MTTC measures the amount of time it takes to contain a security incident. Every second counts during the containment of a security incident. Security teams must isolate the impacted areas by suspending access to compromised networks to prevent further escalation.
Threat Intelligence Source Accuracy Rate
This metric indicates whether the threat intelligence sources are accurate and yielding actionable insights. Security teams must ensure that the data collected is updated to the latest threats and TTPs. Sourced information must be verified every so often to confirm accuracy, relevance, and reduce false positive rates.
Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR)
MTTR describes the average time it takes to resolve an incident after it has been formally acknowledged. The longer a critical threat remains unresolved, the higher the risk and cost of mitigation.
Average Incident Response Rate
Defines the response time for each incident / the total number of incidents within a defined time frame. It also provides context from the moment an incident is identified to the initial response action. Security researchers can analyze whether the threat has been properly contained or if additional mitigation is required. A risk assessment should also be performed for further threat evaluation.
Incident Detection Rate (IDR)
Measures the percentage of security incidents effectively detected by an organization’s security tools, such as an Intrusion Detection System (IDS). Incident response teams can benchmark the total intrusion attempts against the false positive rate to reduce noise and prioritize mitigation on high-level threats.
Number of Resolved Incidents
Describes the total security incidents successfully mitigated over a specific time frame. Questions to consider include: How long did the incident take to resolve? How many touchpoints did it take to resolve the issue and what was the complexity of the incident? Compare results by quarter and track progress over time.
Incidents Over Time
This metric tracks the frequency of incidents over a defined period. Security teams can benchmark this metric by monthly, quarterly, or annual incidents. Threat researchers may look for repeating attack patterns or signals that may indicate a recurring trend, and determine if vulnerability management programs are effective.
First Touch Resolution Rate (FTRR)
FTRR describes the percentage of incidents that have been successfully mitigated during the initial response phase. This metric is extremely valuable, as it indicates the effectiveness of threat detection and response tools and the organization’s ability to contain threats.
Escalation Rate
Describes the percentage of incidents that require higher-level security teams to intervene. Escalation may be necessary due to the complexity of threat, the severity of the attack, or the need for specialized expertise beyond the initial response team’s scope.
Number of Newly Identified Attack Patterns (TTPs)
Tracks the amount of newly discovered TTPs. Threat intelligence teams can benchmark the data aggregated across public and private sources and plan mitigation strategies accordingly.
Vulnerability Density
Vulnerability density is a CTEM metric that calculates the total number of vulnerabilities by the total number of systems or applications. An enterprise will require more resources for vulnerability scanning due to the nature of complexity and interconnected systems and associated components. A high density score suggests that additional security measures must either be implemented or enforced.
Quantify Your Organization’s Threat Exposure with CYE
Threat exposure metrics should be benchmarked over time as the organization matures and increases assets. But more importantly, these valuable metrics should serve as a guiding framework for security teams to make more data-driven decisions about mitigation strategies.
Quantify your organization’s threat exposure level with CYE.
CYE’s Hyver platform determines the financial consequences of a breach for every impacted business-critical asset with a visual diagram. Get a clear snapshot of your cyber risk posture to optimize mitigation strategies and demonstrate ROI to the board.
Discover the estimated cost of a breach in your organization. Schedule a demo today.
