Knowing what is exposed to the internet is only the beginning. The harder question is deciding what actually…
Mario M. — Independent Threat Researcher | Ransomware Intelligence & OSINT
Knowing what is exposed to the internet is only the beginning.
The harder question is deciding what actually deserves attention first.
A public attack surface can include hundreds or thousands of web applications, cloud services, network services, domains, IP addresses, and unmanaged assets.
But exposure alone doesn’t determine priority.
A production VPN with a known exploited vulnerability is a very different problem from an intentionally public service with limited business impact.
That distinction shaped this Public Asset Exposure screen.
Instead of making the visualization itself the center of the experience, I designed the workflow around the decisions a security team needs to make:
• Where is meaningful external exposure increasing?
• Which exposures require attention first?
• Why is a particular asset considered high risk?
• Who owns it?
• What evidence supports the finding?
• What should happen next?
The Attack Surface Overview provides orientation without overwhelming the user with topology.
The priority queue brings exposure, exploitability, environment, ownership, and business context into the same decision surface.
Selecting an exposure keeps the user in context while providing the evidence needed to investigate it.
From there, the workflow can move directly toward ownership and remediation.
Orient → Prioritize → Understand → Investigate → Remediate
The goal wasn’t to create a more impressive attack surface visualization.
It was to reduce the amount of interpretation required between discovering an exposed asset and deciding what to do about it.
Good cybersecurity products don’t just make risk visible.
They make the next decision clearer.
4 reactions · 4 comments
Comments
Zane A.: Hey Mario, your philosophy is incredibly spot on. Focusing on the workflow and the decisions an analyst has to make rather than just showing a massive web of exposed assets is a massive step forward for product maturity. It treats security teams like people with limited time, not just processors of data.The distinction you made between the vulnerable VPN and an intentional public service is the ex
Mario M.: Zane Anderson Thanks! That’s exactly the challenge I was thinking about. For the “Understand” stage, I’d keep the primary view focused on the strongest decision signals-why the exposure is prioritized, exploitability, business context, ownership, and the key evidence behind the finding. “Investigate” is where I’d progressively reveal the deeper technical detail when it’s actually needed, rather th
Zane A.: @Mario That makes total sense. Keeping technical depth available but not default is the best way to keep an analyst from drowning in data. Looking at it from a Red Team perspective, this is exactly where our work can integrate proactively with your design. When we simulate an attack or find an exposure, we generate the raw proof of concept, exploit strings, and execution paths. Instead of just thr
Mario M.: Zane Anderson Exactly. That connection between offensive evidence and the investigation context is where this becomes especially interesting from a product perspective. Keeping that evidence tied to the exposure could reduce a lot of the context switching between discovery, validation, and remediation. Great point from the Red Team side.