Palo Alto Cortex Xpanse: Key Features, Limitations & Alternatives

Notable Cortex Xpanse Alternatives

In light of the above limitations, organizations should consider Cortex XPanse alternatives. Here are a few popular alternatives.

1. CyCognito

The CyCognito platform addresses today’s exposure management requirements by taking an automated multi-faceted approach in identifying and remediating critical issues based on their business impact, rather than focusing on the generic severity of the threat alone. To do this you need a platform that is continuously monitoring the attack surface for changes and provides intelligent prioritization that incorporates organizations context.

The CyCognito platform addresses today’s vulnerability management requirements by:

• Maintaining an asset inventory with classification of the entire external attack surface, including exposed on-premise and cloud-hosted assets like web applications, IP addresses, domains and certificates, eliminating the need to rely on outdated or incomplete information from collaboration tools, spreadsheets, or emails. This approach significantly reduces the burden of tedious, error-prone and costly processes.
• Application security testing, including dynamic application security testing, or DAST, which uncovers complex issues and validates known issues, with low false positives. Each exploited asset is assigned a security grade based on its criticality to the business.
• Prioritizing critical issues, guiding security teams to focus on the most urgent threats. Our unique risk-based prioritization analysis goes beyond the common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS), and incorporates factors like asset discoverability, asset attractiveness, exploitability, business impact and remediation complexity.
• Integrated tactical threat intelligence identifies the handful of attack vectors that pose the greatest risk.
• Streamlining communications between remediation teams by providing comprehensive, verifiable evidence for each exploited asset. This evidence includes detailed risk assessments, asset ownership information, and actionable remediation guidance. The platform seamlessly integrates with SIEM, SOAR and ticketing system tools like Jira, ServiceNow and Splunk to facilitate information sharing and collaboration.

Learn more about the Cycognito Attack Surface Management Platform.

2. Microsoft Defender EASM

Microsoft Defender EASM offers tools for managing and mitigating risks associated with external attack surfaces. It helps organizations maintain continuous visibility into unmanaged and shadow IT resources in dynamic, hybrid environments. Its AI-driven capabilities enable cloud security teams to discover, classify, and prioritize vulnerabilities.

Key features include:

• Real-time inventory monitoring: Continuously tracks and categorizes internet-facing assets, ensuring that newly added or modified resources are included in the attack surface.
• Multicloud visibility: Provides dynamic inventory and analysis across various cloud environments, including SaaS, IaaS, and hybrid setups.
• Shadow IT discovery: Identifies unmanaged resources resulting from business growth or employee-led initiatives.
• Exposure detection and prioritization: Uses AI to uncover and prioritize vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in exposed resources for effective risk mitigation.
• Generative AI insights: Delivers actionable recommendations on risky assets and external risks.
• Unified security view: Integrates insights across Microsoft’s security ecosystem to provide a consolidated overview of the organization’s risk posture.

3. CrowdStrike Falcon Surface Exposure Management

CrowdStrike Falcon Surface provides external attack surface management (EASM) capabilities, helping organizations to discover, assess, and secure their internet-facing assets. By leveraging adversary-driven insights, it allows teams to identify and mitigate risks from exposed and unmanaged resources.

Key features include:

• Continuous internet mapping: Uses proprietary mapping technology to index the internet, automatically identifying known and unknown assets while monitoring security risks across environments.
• Shadow IT and hidden risk discovery: Detects unmanaged and exposed resources, including shadow IT, providing visibility to reduce breach risks.
• 24/7 attack surface monitoring: Continuously scans the internet to deliver insights into threats and vulnerabilities as they arise.
• AI-driven risk prioritization: Employs ExPRT.AI to assess vulnerabilities, offering guided steps to address exposures and reduce overall risk.
• Adversary-driven intelligence: Provides insights from an attacker’s perspective, enabling organizations to anticipate threats and act to secure their digital estate.

4. Mandiant Attack Surface Management

Mandiant Attack Surface Management offers organizations the ability to see their attack surface from an adversary's perspective. By automating asset discovery and analysis, it identifies vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and exposures across dynamic, distributed, and hybrid IT environments.

Key features include:

• Continuous monitoring: Provides daily, weekly, or on-demand scans to keep external asset visibility up-to-date and responsive to emerging threats.
• Active asset checks: Employs benign payloads based on Mandiant intelligence to validate when assets are vulnerable to exploitation, allowing teams to prioritize remediation.
• Outcome-based asset discovery: Enables tailored workflows for discovering assets aligned with business outcomes or security goals.
• Asset inventory: Creates detailed inventories of external applications, services, and technologies in the organization’s ecosystem.
• Shadow IT identification: Continuously monitors for unmanaged or unknown assets, providing daily summaries to maintain oversight of shadow IT.

5. Tenable Attack Surface Management

Tenable Attack Surface Management provides organizations with a view of their internet-connected assets, services, and applications, enabling proactive risk management. By mapping the internet, the tool uncovers known and unknown assets and integrates with Tenable's broader suite of security tools for attack surface visibility and mitigation.

Key features include:

• Discovery: Maps over 5 billion assets across the internet to identify all domains and internet-facing resources, including previously unknown assets. Continuously monitors for changes in the attack surface and sends notifications.
• Contextual insights: Provides metadata, including over 200 fields, to help organizations assess the business context of discovered assets.
• Integrated cyber risk assessment: Connects with Tenable One, Tenable Vulnerability Management, and Tenable Security Center to scan for blind spots, assess vulnerabilities, and address risks across the external attack surface.
• Continuous monitoring: Delivers ongoing visibility into internet-connected assets to help organizations keep up with evolving threats.
• Compliance support: Identifies locations where personally identifiable information (PII) is captured and stored, ensuring compliance with industry regulations.

Conclusion

Organizations seeking external attack surface management solutions can choose from a variety of tools tailored to their needs. These alternatives provide capabilities such as continuous asset discovery, risk prioritization, shadow IT identification, and multicloud visibility, often integrating with existing security workflows. By leveraging automated analysis and actionable insights, these tools enable businesses to mitigate risks and improve their overall security posture.