9 Attack Surface Monitoring Tools in 2025

Cybersecurity is an arms race. Cyber criminals are never idle and are always searching for new ways to infiltrate an organization’s defenses. The statistics show that in the last year alone, 14% of the breaches began with vulnerability exploitation, which is tripling the rate of the previous year. The traditional approaches to security, such as routine scanning, are inadequate to combat these threats. This calls for attack surface monitoring tools. These tools can help you scan your environment regularly for potential issues that can be exploited by attackers if not addressed promptly. It is always wise to be prepared, and this is why the proactive approach in security can help to prevent the increasing number of cyber threats to organizations.

The idea is simple: consolidate scanning, asset discovery, and threat alerts in real-time to prevent latent vulnerabilities in your environment from being exploited. Attack surface management software zeroes in on externally facing systems as well as internal networks, bridging any gaps across multi-cloud or hybrid setups. In this blog, we will define the fundamentals of modern attack surface monitoring, outline the need for robust solutions, and detail nine noteworthy offerings that can strengthen security programs well into 2025.

What is Attack Surface Monitoring?

At its core, attack surface monitoring entails ongoing scrutiny of an organization’s external and internal assets for potential exposures—be they open ports, overlooked subdomains, misconfigured cloud services, or public-facing APIs. The purpose is to track fast or relatively recently developed systems that can sometimes remain unnoticed by traditional scanning procedures. Through such identification, teams can easily notice that some patches are half done or endpoints are not secure while others may have outdated credentials. Since attackers actively look for the least resistance, constant vigilance makes it impossible for anything to go unnoticed. In many cases, this approach synchronizes the scan with real-time threat intelligence to show vulnerabilities that are being actively exploited.

Need for Attack Surface Monitoring Tools

Continuous oversight has become not only a necessity but a reality in the current society. Attackers take advantage of expansions such as newly created microservices or test servers with poor security measures in place. A study by IBM indicated that, on average, it takes organizations 204 days to discover a breach and another 73 days to mitigate it; this shows that scanning is either slow or not thorough. Below are five reasons organizations invest in advanced attack surface monitoring tools:

• Uncovering Unknown Assets: Shadow IT, obsolete servers, or development environments can sometimes remain unnoticed by inventory systems. These areas are discovered first by attackers and used as entryways to the system. In this process, security teams actively monitor IP ranges, subdomains, and certificates, effectively mapping out everything that is connected. This approach assists in aligning the detection so that solutions for ephemeral or unregistered endpoints are not overlooked.

1. Real-Time Risk Assessment: Scheduling can allow important misconfigurations to go unnoticed for weeks or even months. Real-time, continuous scanning makes it easy to detect new ports that have been opened or changes made to them. This real-time vantage reduces the time that an intruder could spend in the system before being detected. In the event that a vulnerability is detected in a library that is widely used in the environment, the system alerts all instances so that they can be patched.
2. Integrating with Incident Response: Modern solutions feed discovered exposures to SIEMs or incident response teams, connecting the scanning results with real-time detection. This integration leads to constant triage: when a suspicious event is reported, the responders are immediately informed of any open ports or previously identified weaknesses. By integrating these data flows over time, SOC efficiency is increased, and the time between detection and remediation is reduced.
3. Addressing Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Complexity: Businesses have multiple environments, including AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-premise, with different logging formats or short-term growths. All these environments are managed by a single consolidated platform for scanning. If there is no such solution, blind spots appear very quickly. By ensuring broad coverage, attack surface analysis tools help unify the modern sprawl of corporate IT.
4. Regulatory and Compliance Pressures: It is essential for many industries to conduct periodic or continuous scans to address compliance with frameworks such as PCI DSS or HIPAA. Real-time asset detection means that no resource or domain can exist outside of the compliance program. Automated reports can provide evidence of consistent scanning intervals to external auditors. In the long run, integration of proactive tools leads to streamline and data-driven compliance processes.

Attack Surface Monitoring Tools for 2025

Below, we present nine platforms shaping attack surface monitoring. All of them are different in terms of specialization, ranging from short-term cloud computing applications to integrated vulnerability assessment across the environment. These are designed to minimize unknown endpoints and accelerate patch or remediating efforts.

SentinelOne Singularity™ Cloud Security

SentinelOne Singularity™ Cloud Security goes beyond mere attack surface monitoring and management. It secures containers, virtual machines, and serverless environments in multi-cloud and on-premises environments.

As a holistic CNAPP solution, SentinelOne gives organizations access to powerful features that provide them with end-to-end protection. The core features offered by SentinelOne’s agentless CNAPP are: Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM),  External Attack and Surface Management (EASM), AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM), Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP),  and Cloud Detection and Response (CDR). Let’s explore what SentinelOne can do below.

Platform at a Glance:

1. SentinelOne offers autonomous AI-based protection that deflects attacks in real-time. It enables active threat hunting across entire cloud ecosystems. You get access to world-class threat intelligence built into the platform. SentinelOne provides protection for all workloads, apps, and data all in one place.

1. By using SentinelOne’s unified CNAPP, you can deploy active protection that goes beyond merely managing cloud configurations. You can respond, contain, and fully control all aspects of your cloud remotely. Use no code/low code Hyper automation workflows for even faster automation capabilities.
2. Get full coverage for public, private, hybrid, and on-prem clouds. You can also discover unknown cloud deployments and get support for physical servers, serverless, and storage devices, including VMs, containers, and Kuberentes environments. SentinelOne requires no kernel access and also offers fine-grain performance controls that are tailored to your environment.

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Features:

1. AI Security: SentinelOne can discover AI pipelines and models and configure checks on AI services.
2. Secret Detection: Detects any exposed credentials such as usernames and passwords in source code, docker images, or logs.
3. Multi-Cloud Posture Management: Scans each environment (AWS, Azure, GCP) and applies the best practices to ensure they are secure.
4. Verified Exploit Paths: It prioritizes vulnerabilities based on how easy it is to exploit them rather than creating long lists of patches to apply.
5. Hyper Automation: Performs patch or reconfiguration tasks autonomously, reducing the workload of security personnel for deeper analysis.

Core Problems SentinelOne Solves

1. Can map out inventories, find and track dormant/inactive accounts, and monitor resource consumption
2. SentinelOne’s Offensive Security Engine™ with Verified Exploit Paths™ can predict attacks before they happen. Purple AI provides deeper insights and Storylines can correlate and reconstruct past security events for better analysis.
3. Reduces alert fatigue, prevents false positives, and eliminates alert noise
4. Can fix the lack of regular updates and patching; SentinelOne ensures 24/7 attack surface monitoring and remediates critical vulnerabilities in just 1-click.
5. Can fight against ransomware, malware, phishing, social engineering, keylogging, and other forms of cyber threats
6. Improves container and CI/CD pipeline security; comes with Snyk integration and also prevents secrets and cloud credentials leakages.
7. Solves compliance gaps and prevents policy violations; ensures continuous adherence to the latest regulatory standards like SOC 2, HIPAA, NIST, and others.

Testimonials:

“As an API developer, I use SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security for cloud security posture management. It efficiently alerts us to vulnerabilities and integrates with Jira for issue tracking, saving 20%-25% in costs. It’s easy to use, though it could improve in application security features. 

The best features we value in SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security include compliance monitoring features, as we are a frequently audited company. They provide reports with compliance scores, showing how well we meet certain regulatory standards, such as HIPAA, and we can show our compliance as a percentage. “

• Chetan Yelve (Associate Software Engineer at Cateina Technologies)

Explore how users rely on SentinelOne to manage and reduce their external attack surface, as shared on Gartner Peer Insights and Peerspot. 

CrowdStrike Falcon

CrowdStrike Falcon provides coverage for cloud workloads and ties endpoint data with container and VM inspection. It gathers information from temporary or permanent hosts, identifying malicious activity or newly discovered weaknesses. Threat intelligence and real-time correlation are expected to generate accurate alerts to enable immediate analysis. Its agent-based approach makes it possible to achieve a uniform visibility of different elements of the infrastructure.

Features:

1. Agent-Based Telemetry: Gathers OS-level logs from an endpoint or a host where the container is running for immediate analysis.
2. Cloud Threat Hunting: This combines host data with intelligence feeds and advanced detection techniques like ML, IOAs to identify threats.
3. Abnormality Alert: Raises concerns about memory or process tampering, links scanning to runtime information.
4. API-Driven Integrations: Compatible with either SIEM or DevOps for integrating patching tasks or incident escalation.

See how users rate CrowdStrike Falcon on Peerspot.

Trend Vision One

Trend Vision One is an endpoint protection solution that includes external attack surface management to identify potential vulnerabilities.  Its single hub gathers threat intelligence, compliance checks, and container scanning.  Real-time dashboards are used to draw attention to new risks or changes in risk as they emerge. Log correlation is employed to prevent such threats from going unnoticed while at the same time eliminating the possibility of false alarms.

Features:

1. External Asset Scanning: It is the process of discovering subdomains or public endpoints to determine shadow IT.
2. Container & Serverless Coverage: Detects transient workloads by integrating with Kubernetes or similar container orchestrators.
3. Unified Analytics: Combines endpoint logs with network details for accurate infiltration identification.
4. Compliance Dashboards: Maps open issues against PCI or HIPAA, automatically creating audit reports.

Discover what users say about Trend Vision One on Peerspot.

Darktrace

Darktrace uses AI-based detection for networks, endpoints, and cloud services to spot deviations from normal activity. It uses machine learning to set up a program that defines what is considered ‘normal’ behavior and flags patternless activity but prioritizes deviations indicating potential threats. Some adaptive response features can detect and exclude a host or a connection that is infected. It also applies to IoT devices and detects anomalous behavior.

Features:

1. Machine Learning Baselines: Learns normal network traffic and user activity for real-time anomaly detection.
2. Cloud & On-Prem Integration: Combines logs from both cloud and on-premise environments for a unified view.
3. Adaptive Response: Suggests or initiates quarantines in case of significant changes in traffic flows.
4. IoT Oversight: Expands scanning and behavioral analysis to include connected devices.

Explore how users review Darktrace for threat detection on Peerspot.

Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management

Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management incorporates asset discovery, continuous risk assessment, and external scanning. It maintains an up-to-date inventory through the use of network, agent, and cloud connectors.  It considers the endpoints for patching based on newly discovered or known vulnerabilities. Compliance modules map the problem to possible standards like PCI or HIPAA for the remediation process.

Features:

1. Centralized Inventory: Merges agent-based and agentless detections for a live view of assets.
2. Continuous Assessment: Performs periodic or on-demand scans and provides fixes based on the severity of the issue.
3. External Attack Surface Review: Shows assets or subdomains that are visible to the public in real-time
4. Compliance & Policy Enforcement: It relates the issues to specific frameworks to enable compliance and adherence to regulations.

Find out how users rate Qualys CSAM on Peerspot.

Mandiant Advantage

Mandiant Advantage involves threat intelligence, attack surface scanning, and domain research to identify any potential vulnerabilities in security. It inspects domain footprints, identifying suspicious DNS records or newly created subdomains. Assets and exposures identified are then matched with known TTPs of the attacker in order to rank risks. Its incident replay function correlates alerts with known infiltration steps, which provides a better understanding of how to mitigate them.

Features:

1. Global Threat Intelligence: Aligns results to patterns adopted by identified threat groups.
2. External Footprint: Scans the internet for phishing domains, fake brands, and uncharted endpoints.
3. Risk Assessment: Integrates the criticality of the asset with the threat to determine which issues require priority attention.
4. Incident Replay: Maps connected events to known TTP chains, suggesting mitigations.

Check out what users think of Mandiant Advantage on Peerspot.

IONIX

IONIX focuses on the external domain scan and identification of temporal resources with a relatively low overhead. It pulls logs from containers or serverless environments and identifies known CVEs or exposures within them. Automated patch pipelines can provide an immediate update with a patch or send a reconfiguration command to the DevOps orchestration system. Real-time dashboards provide a consolidated view of domain extensions, container restarts, and security status.

Features:

1. Lightweight Agentless Discovery: Scans resources without heavy software deployment.
2. Auto-Patch Orchestration: It automatically sends patches to DevOps tools once vulnerabilities are identified.
3. Analytics-Driven Risk Scores: Uses AI-based scores to prioritize patients under the limited availability of resources.
4. API-First Design: Integrates with CI/CD or ITSM platforms for collaboration.

See how security teams view IONIX on Peerspot.

Cortex Cloud

Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks maps the internet to find external assets belonging to an organization. It identifies unknown or misconfigured endpoints and links them to known vulnerabilities or exploits. It scans the IP space to identify resources that have been left disconnected or are outdated.  Integrating with other Cortex products enables the feeding of such suspicious findings to a single SOC interface.

Features:

1. Internet-Scale Indexing: The platform offers a feature to identify and manage network assets and security risks.
2. Vulnerability Correlation: Evaluates each discovered asset for default credentials or patched status.
3. Risk Assessment: Determines feasibility of exploitation, level of publicity, and value of asset.
4. Integration with Cortex: Passes flagged items to other Palo Alto solutions for SOC integration.

Discover how users rely on Cortex Cloud on Peerspot.

Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management

Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management identifies subdomains, misconfigurations, and exposed services that may pose infiltration threats. It identifies new or changed endpoints and maps them to Defender’s threat intelligence for prioritization using Azure data. This approach simplifies patching and reconfiguration in Azure-centric environments and identifies areas of weakness for immediate attention.

Features:

1. External Asset Enumeration: Examines newly discovered endpoints and their associated DNS records, certificates, and IP ranges.
2. Azure Synergy: Integrates with Azure Resource Manager to scan in cloud-heavy deployments.
3. Threat-Driven Prioritization: Shows the exposure of targets to known campaigns and helps to address them.
4. Policy Enforcement: Recommends changes that are easy to implement and correlate to Azure security controls.

Learn how users rate Defender EASM on Peerspot.

Key Considerations When Selecting an Attack Surface Monitoring Tool

The variety of attack surface management products is broad, and choosing the right solution for your environment demands balancing cost, feature scope, integration, and operational overhead. Here are five important criteria that will assist in matching a potential platform to business requirements and technical environments:

1. Coverage of Hybrid and Multi-Cloud: Determine if the tool can scan AWS, Azure, GCP, or on-prem resources in an integrated manner. Lack of coverage can create blind spots, and if the containers and edge devices are temporary, they may not be monitored. If your environment comprises specific hardware or IoT, make sure the solution integrates the scanning or logic with them. A uniform approach across all footprints fosters simpler analytics and consolidated dashboards.
2. Real-Time or Scheduled Approach: Some environments may allow an organization to scan hourly or daily while others need near real-time alerts. Real-time scanning often involves the use of sophisticated analysis or the constant feeding of data into the system. However, some solutions recommend sweeping at specific intervals for large networks. Identify your risk tolerance and environment velocity and match it with the scanning model; users of the ephemeral container may require real-time or a more frequent check.
3. Integration with Existing Security Stack: Attack surface monitoring rarely operates in isolation. Determine how each tool integrates with your SIEM, EDR, or patch management systems. It is easier to integrate alerts, escalations, and cross-platform correlation if the platform offers open APIs or off-the-shelf integrations. The synergy of integrated solutions fosters consistent triage, plus a single source of truth for risk data.
4. Ease of Deployment and Scalability: Some solutions are agent-based or perform scanning through agents, and some do not use agents at all. Companies with many employees or projects with short lifespans require little overhead, and this should be kept to a minimum. Confirm how expansions/merges are managed to maintain stability while dealing with thousands of endpoints or containers. If the vendor is offering cloud-based scanning with distributed logic, then scaling might be easier.
5. Reporting and Compliance: Business sectors such as finance, healthcare, or government may require highly formalized outputs in terms of compliance. Tools that generate PCI or HIPAA compliance reports automatically can save time on manual work. On the reporting side, consolidated dashboards that link discovered vulnerabilities, their business relevance, and suggested solutions enable fast response and remedial action. Consider how each solution addresses compliance data to ensure that painful manual activities do not occur during the audit season.

Conclusion

Businesses looking for strong cloud and on-prem security cannot wait for monthly scans or set up on-demand checks. Attack surface monitoring tools unify real-time scanning, ephemeral resource oversight, and risk-based prioritization, ensuring minimal dwell times and fewer unknown endpoints. These solutions are useful in that they can help to discover subdomains, cloud resources, or forgotten servers and thereby keep simple misconfigurations from becoming major vulnerabilities. In the long run, integrating scanning with patch management or threat intelligence creates a cycle that promotes constant improvement.

If you are having trouble making a decision, you can take the first step with SentinelOne Singularity™ Cloud Security. The platform integrates scanning with threat identification and remediation, eliminating the gap between discovery and action. For enterprises that are looking for a single security platform that can handle container scanning, managing of temporary resources, and synchronized patching, then SentinelOne is an ideal choice.

Contact SentinelOne to explore how we enhance attack surface monitoring across containers, servers, and multi-cloud footprints.