Attack Surface Management (ASM) focuses on identifying, monitoring, and mitigating potential vulnerabilities and risks across an organization’s entire digital footprint, including both known and unknown assets, to reduce the potential attack surface.
Here’s a more detailed explanation: 
- Continuous Process: ASM is not a one-time task, but rather a continuous process of discovery, analysis, prioritization, remediation, and monitoring.
- Comprehensive Visibility: ASM aims to provide organizations with a broad understanding of their entire digital footprint, including servers, cloud assets, IoT devices, and other interconnected systems.
- Identifying Vulnerabilities: ASM helps identify potential vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that could be exploited by attackers.
- Reducing the Attack Surface: By identifying and addressing vulnerabilities, ASM helps reduce the number of potential entry points for attackers.
- Prioritization and Remediation: ASM helps prioritize vulnerabilities based on risk and provides tools and guidance for remediation.
- Monitoring and Continuous Improvement: ASM involves continuous monitoring of the attack surface and ongoing efforts to identify and address new vulnerabilities.
- Asset Discovery: ASM involves identifying all assets, including those that might be unknown or unmonitored, that could be potential entry points for attackers.
- Risk Assessment: ASM helps assess the risk associated with different vulnerabilities and potential attack vectors.
- Threat Mitigation: ASM provides tools and techniques to mitigate identified risks and reduce the potential for successful attacks.