The cyber threat landscape is evolving faster than security teams can keep up. Organisations are no longer just defending their own networks – they must also manage risks from cloud services, third-party providers, vulnerable identities and dark web exposures. The traditional security model, based on scheduled scans and compliance-driven patching, is failing to keep pace, leaving businesses vulnerable to the growing number of emerging attack vectors.

At the same time, remediation and management solutions struggle with the sheer scale of modern attack surfaces. Security teams are overwhelmed with alerts, yet critical exposures still go unnoticed. Organizations need to work smarter when managing their threat exposure, and in this way prioritise the risks that actually matter before they become incidents.

As a response during the last decade, we have seen several new frameworks, methodologies and solutions, from Identity Exposure to Attack Surface Management. Most recently, Gartner introduced Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM), which was also named number two on their top 10 strategic technology trends for 2024. But what exactly do these buzzwords mean? What are the actual changes going from one methodology to the next? And how does this latest iteration, CTEM, fit into the bigger picture – and potentially offer the right approach for your organisation?

During this presentation, I will navigate the complex and evolving solution landscape of exposure management, describe where and why CTEM fits in, and offer recommendations on where organisations can start in modernising their approach. The aim is to go beyond general descriptions, and rather dive into concrete examples for a modern approach to exposure and attack surface management in 2025.