What is Attack Surface Threat Assessment (ASTA)?

SOCRadar has officially launched ASTA (Attack Surface Threat Assessment). It is now a key module in SOCRadar’s Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) platform. ASTA gives security teams real-time visibility and full control over vulnerabilities across their digital attack surface, all from one centralized dashboard.

It helps organizations find and manage the risks in their digital presence on the internet. This includes everything from public websites and APIs to forgotten subdomains and exposed cloud services.

Think of ASTA as a smart scanner for your external attack surface. It doesn’t just look for problems, it keeps scanning over time, checks if fixes actually worked, and tells you which vulnerabilities are the most dangerous right now.

ASTA (Attack Surface Threat Assessment) Process

What is CTEM and why does it matter?

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) is a proactive cybersecurity approach. It helps organizations identify, assess, and reduce risks before attackers can exploit them. CTEM runs continuous security checks and simulations to uncover vulnerabilities across your entire attack surface.

Gartner states that CTEM prioritizes threats that are most material to your business, helping teams focus on what matters most. This is especially important today, as digital environments keep expanding and threat actors grow more advanced. By constantly monitoring and testing security defenses, CTEM helps organizations stay ready for attacks and reduce their overall exposure.

ASTA Process

ASTA is part of SOCRadar’s Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) platform. It works closely with Digital Footprint Intelligence, giving you a complete picture of both known and unknown assets. This means it can detect risks across your environment—even in places your team might not know exist.

With ASTA, you can:

• Discover internet-facing assets in real time
• Scan them for vulnerabilities or misconfigurations
• Validate if those risks are fixed after patching
• Prioritize what needs attention based on real-world threat data

The goal is simple: reduce exposure, improve response, and stay ahead of attackers. 

Who is ASTA For?

ASTA (Attack Surface Threat Assessment) is for teams that need continuous visibility into their external attack surface. It supports anyone responsible for identifying, tracking, and reducing vulnerabilities in internet-facing assets.

Whether the goal is to build a system aligned with Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) or to maintain ongoing vulnerability scanning, ASTA provides the tools to make that process easier and more effective. It’s especially useful for organizations using Extended Threat Intelligence (XTI) licenses, except those on the free tier.

What Problems Does ASTA Solve?

Modern organizations face increasing complexity in tracking their digital assets and exposure. Blind spots in your external footprint limit your threat detection capabilities. Even after vulnerabilities are patched, you might wonder if the fix worked, or if other weak points remain.

ASTA also addresses the need for flexibility. Predefined, rigid scans often leave gaps. Instead, ASTA lets you customize policies and schedules to match your risk profile.

What Makes ASTA Valuable?

ASTA (Attack Surface Threat Assessment) brings several strengths to your security workflow:

• It provides real-time visibility into vulnerabilities across both visible and hidden assets.
• Its risk scoring doesn’t rely only on CVSS. It also uses real-world exploitability data and asset context.
• You can create custom scan policies and run on-demand or automated scans at your preferred frequency.
• After patching, ASTA runs revalidation scans to make sure vulnerabilities are actually fixed.
• The system logs every action. You get a full scan history for audit and remediation tracking.
• With over 30,000 scanning plugins, ASTA covers CVEs, misconfigurations, weak credentials, and more.

ASTA Features At a Glance

ASTA (Attack Surface Threat Assessment) Features

Continuous Security Assessments

Choose what, when, and how to scan—whether it’s public websites, login portals, or cloud platforms. You can define policies to match specific asset types and risk levels.

Critical Risk Prioritization

ASTA combines CVSS data with exploit trends, asset exposure, and threat intelligence (like CISA KEV) to automatically focus attention on the most urgent risks.

Vulnerability Validation

After a fix, you can trigger a manual or automatic re-scan. This confirms the issue is truly resolved and reduces false positives.

Full Scan History

Each scan logs target assets, plugin data, scan time, and validation status. This record supports MTTR tracking, audit readiness, and pattern detection.

Dynamic Vulnerability Library

The engine uses plugin-based scanning powered by a live-updating database. These plugins are grouped into families like SSL misconfigurations, brute force risks, or vendor-specific vulnerabilities like Cisco or Huawei.

Custom Policies

You can build policies from scratch or use templates that target specific threat types–like ransomware or known exploited vulnerabilities. Schedule them to run on a timeline that fits your operations.

Real-World Use Cases

ASTA (Attack Surface Threat Assessment) supports a wide range of real-world cybersecurity needs. Below are some examples of how security teams are using it to stay ahead of threats and streamline operations:

• External Attack Surface Monitoring at Scale
  Large enterprises use ASTA to continuously discover and monitor thousands of internet-facing assets across departments and geographies. It finds forgotten subdomains, misconfigured cloud services, and exposed APIs that traditional tools often miss.
• Faster Response to Zero-Day Threats
  When a new vulnerability is disclosed, teams can use ASTA to quickly scan their environment for exposure. The real-time dashboards help security teams act fast, isolate vulnerable assets, and reduce time to remediation.
• Third-Party and M&A Risk Assessments
  Before onboarding a new vendor or finalizing an acquisition, organizations run targeted scans using ASTA to check for exposed systems, weak credentials, or misconfigured assets in the partner environment.
• Custom Defense Strategies Based on Threat Intelligence
  Security teams create scan policies tailored to emerging threats, such as ransomware or CVEs listed in CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. ASTA’s threat-driven prioritization helps teams focus on what’s actively being exploited in the wild.
• Audit and Compliance Readiness
  With full scan histories and validation logs, ASTA simplifies audit preparation. GRC teams can quickly generate reports to show asset coverage, remediation status, and response timelines.

By covering both day-to-day operations and strategic assessments, ASTA brings real, practical value to security programs. It helps teams detect issues earlier, respond faster, and build a security posture that adapts to a constantly changing threat landscape.

Conclusion

ASTA (Attack Surface Threat Assessment) marks a big step forward in SOCRadar’s platform. It’s built for teams that want visibility, validation, and control over their external risk landscape. With its flexible design, real-time data, and rich scanning capabilities, ASTA helps organizations stay ahead of threats—not just react to them.

SOCRadar encourages all XTI customers (excluding free-tier users) to explore ASTA and integrate it into their security workflows.

Whether you’re managing audits, chasing down zero-days, or validating patches, ASTA gives you the insight and tools to do it smarter.

To learn how ASTA fits within a larger strategic framework, see our strategic guide on Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM).