Why Customers Choose CyCognito over
Microsoft Defender EASM
Despite labeling itself as an attack surface management product, Microsoft’s Defender EASM lacks the most fundamental capability: it cannot find so-called unknown unknown assets. Instead, Defender EASM relies on users providing lists of known seed assets to populate their map of the attack surface. As a result, unknown unknowns – which Defender EASM calls “outliers” – stay in the dark and can’t be contextualized, tested, or prioritized.
Organization Discovery & Mapping
Use deep discovery to see what an attacker sees.
Microsoft Defender EASM |
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Microsoft Defender EASM misses unknown unknown assets and key asset types.
- Defender EASM assembles an organizational view after asset discovery is complete, not before and misses key parts of your attack surface
- Defender EASM cannot find unknown unknowns, leaving assets and subsidiaries – and their risks – in the dark
- Defender EASM does not identify subsidiary organizations or assess their risk based on the assets they manage
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CyCognito starts by mapping your organization and continuously updates it as your business changes.
- CyCognito uses natural language processing, machine learning, and a graph data model to automatically map the organization, and identify subsidiaries
- CyCognito goes beyond owned environments, covering web applications, data centers, SaaS, IaaS, brands, acquired companies, joint ventures, and cloud environments
- CyCognito categorizes subsidiaries based on risk score and creates a plan to improve their security posture
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Zero-Input Discovery
Find your unknown unknowns.
Microsoft Defender EASM |
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Microsoft Defender EASM cannot keep up with your dynamic attack surface.
- Defender EASM’s discovery process uses seed data and does not identify “outlier” assets
- Defender EASM’s manual discovery process requires extensive human intervention and cannot automatically adjust to changes in your assets or attack surface
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CyCognito doesn’t rely on what you know to find what you don’t.
- CyCognito requires zero-input, zero-seeds, zero configuration, and zero onboarding
- CyCognito uses OSINT-based reconnaissance techniques to attribute and contextualize the entire attack surface and identify unknown unknowns
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Automated Unauthenticated Security Testing
High confidence automated risk validation for all assets.
Microsoft Defender EASM |
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Microsoft Defender EASM relies on limited, low fidelity, disruptive passive testing.
- Defender EASM’s offers no active testing, missing threat vectors that can only be evaluated with active tests, like web applications (using DAST)
- Defender EASM’s passive scanning is noisy and identifies only limited number of risks, leaving most of your attack surface in the dark and untested
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CyCognito actively and non-intrusively tests for 10,000s of CVEs with more than 80,000 tests.
- CyCognito’s automated, unauthenticated security tests span 35+ categories, including DAST for web applications,OWASP Top 10, weak credentials, broken authentication, subdomain takeover, exploitable vulnerabilities, and data exposure
- CyCognito’s testing engines cover 100% of your exposed attack surface on customizable cadences, even for attack surfaces that contain millions of assets and tens of thousands of web applications
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Accelerated Red Teaming
Maximize the results of your pen testing.
Microsoft Defender EASM |
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Microsoft Defender EASM leaves red teams wasting time on asset discovery and basic tests.
- Defender EASM relies on passive scanning, leading to wasted time validating false positives and misses real risks
- Defender EASM fails to provide crucial asset context and attribution information
- Defender EASM doesn’t discover unknown unknowns, leaving the riskiest assets in the dark and untested
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CyCognito’s single source of truth scales your red team and makes your pen-testing budget go further.
- CyCognito’s suite of 80,000+ unauthenticated automated remote checks reduces repetitive work
- CyCognito supplies context and attribution for all external assets, making pen test information easier to operationalize
- CyCognito provides the coverage, accuracy and frequency required to understand gaps in security posture
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Risk-based Issue Prioritization
Focus on risks, not on issues.
Microsoft Defender EASM |
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Microsoft Defender EASM misses key context, assets, and issues, leading to ineffective prioritization.
- Defender EASM’s prioritization is ineffective, identifying over 7% of issues as critical
- Defender EASM can only prioritize based on CVSS, failing to consider business risk, asset context, active testing results or issue exploitability
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CyCognito’s prioritization considers asset attractiveness to attackers, business context, targeted threat intelligence, and results from 80,000+ tests.
- CyCognito’s next-gen prioritization algorithms identify less than 0.1% of issues as critical, focusing your teams on the most critical risks to your attack surface
- CyCognito prioritizes every issue alongside verifiable evidence of exploitability, enabling a >60% reduction in MTTR, often days instead of weeks
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Remediation Validation and Integrations
Minimize errors, maximize efficiency.
Microsoft Defender EASM |
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Microsoft Defender EASM lack of connectors and remediation tools slows MTTR.
- Defender EASM only uses two primary data connectors: Microsoft’s Log Analytics and Azure Data Explorer
- Defender EASM alone cannot validate remediation success, requiring manual followup
- Defender EASM lacks the ability to build a remediation plan to guide systematic improvements
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CyCognito works directly with leading security solutions like Splunk, ServiceNow, and Armis.
- CyCognito supports over 1,200 integrations and apps that help you work seamlessly, centralize information, and boost collaboration.
- CyCognito’s Remediation Validation feature automatically checks if a remediation attempt has been successful
- CyCognito’s Remediation Planner tool builds remediation plans to improve the security posture of organizations and their subsidiaries
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Live CyCognito Demo
