The Hidden Threat: Why Attackers Target Neglected Assets
▼ Summary
– Neglected assets are a major overlooked cybersecurity risk, including forgotten cloud resources, outdated OT systems, expired domains, and abandoned storage.
– These hidden vulnerabilities quietly expand the attack surface, making organizations more susceptible to breaches.
– Attackers actively exploit these blind spots to gain unauthorized access or cause harm.
– Recent guidance from CISA addresses this issue and provides recommendations for improving security.
– Practical steps for organizations include enhancing visibility, lifecycle management, and governance to prevent such vulnerabilities.
In today’s complex digital environment, one of the most underestimated cybersecurity dangers involves neglected assets. These forgotten or overlooked resources, ranging from abandoned cloud instances and outdated operational technology to expired domains and unattended storage systems, quietly broaden the attack surface, offering intruders easy entry points without raising alarms.
Security professionals like Tim Chase, a Tech Evangelist at Orca Security, emphasize how threat actors actively seek out and abuse these blind spots. Attackers frequently scan for dormant or unmaintained infrastructure, knowing that such assets often lack monitoring, patches, or access controls. Once identified, these neglected components become launching pads for more extensive network intrusions, data exfiltration, or ransomware deployment.
Recent guidance from CISA underscores the importance of addressing this issue, urging organizations to adopt stricter lifecycle management and governance protocols. Practical measures include conducting regular asset inventories, automating discovery tools, enforcing strict decommissioning policies, and implementing continuous monitoring. By improving visibility and control over all digital resources, companies can significantly reduce their exposure to breaches stemming from forgotten or ignored IT and cloud assets.
(Source: HelpNet Security)
