4 Types of Attack Surface in Cybersecurity

From stolen credentials to unsecured cloud endpoints, every resource within the IT environment can be an entry point for attackers. In the fiscal year 2023, the U.S. government was targeted by 6,198 phishing attacks and more than 12 thousand cases of misuse by legal users. From these examples, we can conclude that even institutions that are considered to be very credible and reliable are not safe from infiltration. Additionally, there are several organizations that have no or limited knowledge of the types of attack surfaces. Thus, they remain oblivious to the attack surface, fail to protect important resources and minimize cyber threats.

To help organizations understand better, in this article, we will explain the attack surface definition and why it should be reduced. In the next section, we will describe the four domains of digital, physical, human, and social engineering and provide an insight into the typical issues that may occur. We will also provide real-world attack surface examples, including big data breaches and newly developing threats. Last but not least, we will discuss how to minimize your overall attack surface and how SentinelOne can help you accomplish your cyber security goals in 2025.

What is Attack Surface?

An attack surface in cybersecurity can also be described as the different vectors through which an attacker can attempt to breach a system or gain unauthorized access to or steal data from it. This could involve not only servers and code repositories but also endpoints of the employees, the cloud containers, or even shadow IT. In a survey conducted in 2023, more than half of the respondents said that data security was their top concern in cybersecurity, thus the need to identify every possible vulnerability.

In a world where connections are frequent and fast, neglecting any partial path can lead to critical threats, ranging from credential compromise to lateral movements in the microservices architecture. Therefore, the identification of your overall attack surface, which encompasses everything from the hardware layer to the user level, is the essential starting point for security. That is why only by listing these possible points of infiltration can security teams seal or isolate them to reduce potential threats.

Types of Attack Surfaces

While organizations might group security weaknesses under a single umbrella, the types of attack vectors are vastly different. Each of the four categories, digital, physical, human, and social engineering, has its own unique vectors of penetration and requires specific protection measures.

When broken down, it becomes easier for the teams to understand which of the defenses they should implement. Here, we identify each domain and its elements, modes of transmission, and strategies to avoid it.

1. Digital Attack Surface

In the times of APIs, containerized workloads, and expansion into multiple clouds, the digital component is a significant part of the attack surface. Unmaintained web services, vulnerable frameworks, or remaining dev endpoints may create direct access points to applications. Through consistently identifying and creating a detailed representation of network edges and constant scanning for threats, security teams can stay on par with an increasingly complex digital environment.

Components

These are diverse software and network entry points of the digital components. The more connected services and cloud functionalities you have, the larger your digital surface area is. Listing each asset (domains, subdomains, APIs, or microservices) helps avoid blind spots that can be targeted by attackers.

1. Web Apps: Web applications involve user interactions and can include authentication and even databases. Thus, vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting can allow a malicious user to modify data or transfer it to unauthorized persons. These infiltration points can be mitigated by regular scanning and integrating a secure SDLC into an organization’s processes.
2. APIs: Microservices use APIs to communicate with each other and with external applications. If the endpoints are not authenticated or the tokens used are old, attackers can easily move around. To prevent them from being compromised, token-based security, rate limiting, and version control can be used.
3. Cloud Services & IoT: Inadequate storage buckets on cloud platforms or insecure IoT devices with no firmware updates introduce new attack vectors. Cybercriminals take advantage of open ports or non-encrypted data transmission. These are minimized through routine configuration checks, enforcement of Transport Layer Security, and firmware updates.

Common Attack Vectors

Some attackers target websites by looking for vulnerable web frameworks, open-testing subdomains, or insecure APIs. Code injection is still a common method of attack, as it allows criminals to modify database queries or server commands. In the case of IoT, for instance, device hijacking or even data interception may be caused by weak encryption. On the other hand, cloud misconfigurations lead to data exposures if authorization settings are not restricted enough.

Mitigation Strategies

Code scanning, using secure code guidelines, and updating vulnerabilities help with managing common software flaws. Lateral movement is restricted by zero-trust architectures, which isolate microservices and validate every request. Security is an important aspect of cloud computing, and to achieve this, strengthening IAM roles and encrypting data in transit is crucial. However, regular environment scans help prevent temporary IoT or dev environments from being missed.

2. Physical Attack Surface

While digital inclusion is more likely to attract the media’s attention, physical hardware and onsite devices are still essential shared entry points. Lost or stolen equipment can compromise data or network login information, which can get past even the most sophisticated firewalls. Knowing your physical environment is crucial to protect yourself from what is often referred to as ‘backdoor’ access, which does not respect computer security.

Components

These concern physical commodities, namely PCs, servers, or phones, and the structures that accommodate them. Physical security measures guarantee restricted access to data centers, corporate offices, and hardware that contains sensitive information. In this way, by listing each device or place, the likelihood of tampering with the devices on-site is minimized.

1. Endpoints: Passwords or cookies may be stored in laptops, desktops or other mobile devices. Theft can directly result in the compromise of data when an endpoint does not have disk encryption or when it has weak passwords. Enforcing encryption and device lockdown remain basic strategies that help prevent physical penetration.
2. Servers: On-premise racks or co-located servers contain important information and crucial services. Missing camera logs or having open access can allow the intruder to install a keylogger or even remove the drives. Physical security measures include proper locks, ID card access, and round-the-clock surveillance to prevent any tampering.
3. Lost/Stolen Devices: Lost hardware is a significant infiltration route, be it a personal phone with corporate emails or a USB drive with backups. They can read local files or steal tokens used for logging in. By utilizing remote wipe capabilities and strong passcodes for each device, this part of your overall attack surface is minimized.

Common Attack Vectors

Business hardware is an essential aspect of any organization, and criminals use force or break-ins to steal corporate hardware. They may search for discarded drives or documents in the dustbins. In some cases, employees cause a rack to fail intentionally by disconnecting cables or installing malicious hardware. Leaving the laptops in cars or unlocked in cafés also increases the physical threat domain.

Mitigation Strategies

Password protection, full-disk encryption, BIOS/UEFI passwords, and device locks also make it difficult to extract information from stolen devices. Another way of minimizing the usage of the peripheral is by disabling the ports or the USB functionalities that are not essential. Proper physical security measures such as scanning of IDs or the use of biometric locks to allow access to the data center minimize sabotage. Additional measures include regular stock verification and proper tracking of assets to check for misplaced or stolen items that are promptly disabled.

3. Human Attack Surface

Since technology is usually the focal point of a company’s defense, most of the biggest data losses are due to human error. While it may be a naive employee who falls for phishing links or an employee with ill-intent leaking company information, human beings are still a part of the attack surface. To ensure that no one makes a mistake and opens a hole for an attacker, it is essential to understand how it can happen to employees, contractors, or partners.

Components

As for human risks, they can be defined by user behaviors, lack of information, and incentives. Lack of good password management, insufficient training, or an insider attack can compromise even the most robust security systems. It is essential for organizations to assess each user’s ability to support or compromise defenses.

1. Insider Threats: Staff may sabotage the company intentionally by leaking credentials or planting backdoors. It is always possible for even the most well-intentioned workers to build shadow IT systems or store information insecurely. Reducing privilege and auditing logs also prevents or identifies insider abuse at an early stage.
2. Phishing: Cybercriminals send emails or messages that look like they originated from official entities to deceive the targets into providing login credentials or downloading malware. These successes are minimized by frequent training of staff. Combined with spam filters and the constant scanning of links, you reduce the possibilities of infiltration significantly.
3. Weak Passwords: Short or easily guessable passwords continue to be a popular entry point. This means that if an employee uses the same passphrases in various systems, hacking one of them will give the hacker access to all the others. This is why password managers should be encouraged, passwords should be made complex, and reset should be made mandatory to minimize the brute force threat.

Common Attack Vectors

Criminals send spear-phishing emails to target staff based on their job descriptions. They might also try to use credentials that were stolen in previous attacks if the employees reused them. External threats are those threats that originate from outside the organization, while internal threats leverage direct access or unmonitored privileges to copy data without any interference. In the absence of proper user behavior analytics or multi-factor authentication, the environment remains exposed to such human-centered attack vectors.

Mitigation Strategies

Security awareness tests, such as frequent fake phishing attacks, help to measure staff awareness and identify training needs. The use of multi-factor authentication significantly reduces the impact of a breached password. Such methods include monitoring for large data transfers or login times, which are indicative of a user’s suspicious activities. Implementing the principle of “least privilege” means that staff members have access to only the necessary level of rights.

4. Social Engineering Attack Surface

Closely connected with human vices, the social engineering layer is aimed at manipulating people, for example, through pretexting or baiting. This domain illustrates how psychological strategies and techniques are able to bypass strict technical countermeasures. Through manipulation, such as trust or time-sensitive issues, criminals compel employees to provide unauthorized access or information.

Components

Social engineering components include psychological elements of control that deal with manipulation that targets affective or cognitive vulnerabilities. Scammers are very selective about the background data they obtain on staff or processes to make their stories plausible. Consequently, even the most sophisticated network scans are not very effective in dealing with the human gullibility factor.

1. Manipulation: Scammers take their time to create an image of credibility or a sense of emergency—like when they pretend to be from the company’s HR asking for a password change. They rely on prompts that compel the staff to perform without questioning the truthfulness of the statement. One way to prevent identity theft is by encouraging skepticism among the staff so that they can easily identify such tricks.
2. Pretexting: In pretexting, the criminals come up with all sorts of cover stories, such as being a partner developer who requires database credentials. They might get your personal information from your LinkedIn profile or other publicly available information to seem authentic. These attempts can be effectively countered by a strong verification protocol, such as the ability to call a known internal number.
3. Baiting: One example of baiting is putting infected USB drives labeled “Bonus_Reports” in an office corridor. It works based on a curiosity that makes staff plug them in. Formal rules that prohibit plugging unknown devices can greatly limit the number of approaches here.

Common Attack Vectors

Phishing emails containing links with malicious code for a more convincing approach or phone calls from scammers disguised as IT support specialists are still commonplace. Cybercriminals also create messages that are sent to the staff asking them to re-enter their account information. After that, criminals proceed further to have full control of the network of the victims. Deception, including dressing as a delivery person, allows the intruder to bypass security measures and gain full access to the building.

Mitigation Strategies

Continued staff training and policy refreshers can keep workers on the lookout for potential issues, such as external calls. Explain to the staff that it is crucial to confirm all urgent requests through the official channels. For physical access, use identification checks or a strict visitors’ register. The combination of continuously repeated drills, familiar escalation procedures, and a security-oriented mindset mitigates social engineering intrusion.

Real-World Attack Surfaces Examples

Even organizations that have strong frameworks are not immune to attacks such as exposed endpoints or stolen credentials. The following five examples demonstrate how the lack of attention to one aspect can result in massive data breaches:

Every example emphasizes that familiar threats are always evolving and must be monitored regardless of the size of the organization.

1. El Salvador’s Chivo Wallet (2024): El Salvador’s national cryptocurrency wallet, Chivo, was hacked in April of the previous year, and the attackers stole 144 GB of personal data and shared the source code. This is a good illustration of how unsecured digital endpoints or open code repositories can be a gateway to an organization. Lax security measures such as not implementing strict access controls or conducting regular penetration tests exposed the government to more risks instead of reducing them. Prevention in the future would include strict implementation of DevSecOps, token-based environment segregation, and multiple code reviews.
2. PlayDapp (2024): Past year, a blockchain gaming firm, PlayDapp, became a victim of an attack that compromised its environment and allowed hackers to create 1.79 billion PLA tokens valued at $290 million. The poor management of a cryptographic key led to a breach by the attackers. It remains unclear how the repeated forging of tokens could have been prevented by multi-signature frameworks or hardware-based key storage. As an attack vector example, it points to the fact that a single compromised cryptographic element can lead to the failure of an entire platform.
3. Government Accountability Office (GAO) (2024): In the previous year, 6,600 people connected to the GAO were affected by a breach that targeted Atlassian Confluence in a contractor’s setting. This infiltration angle demonstrates how third-party software flaws increase the overall attack surface area that an agency cannot directly control. It is also important to patch as soon as possible and to ensure that third parties are assessed properly. To prevent lateral movements, even federal bodies must maintain a detailed record of partner software settings.
4. FortiManager’s Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (2024): FortiManager’s Remote Code Execution vulnerability (CVE-2024-47575) and several others in the Palo Alto Networks firewalls impacted organizations worldwide. Attackers used these vulnerabilities before patches were available or well-known, proving that transient threats can erode an entire perimeter security solution. Fast-paced patching or a more sophisticated detection mechanism that connects one type of digital endpoint to another is always crucial. The synergy of real-time alerts and agile DevSecOps fosters minimal infiltration windows.
5. Snowflake (2024): Snowflake, one of the leading cloud-based data processing services, suffered a breach that involved around 165 large clients such as AT&T and Ticketmaster. The threat actor group used stolen employee credentials to launch attacks and then put those for sale in a cybercrime forum. This shows how much effective use of multi-factor authentication could have prevented lateral escalation from occurring in the first place. As one of the examples of the attack surface, it shows that even cloud solutions that have garnered significant adoption can be vulnerable to basic identity failures.

How to Reduce and Secure Your Attack Surface?

It is now clear that each of the four types of common attack surfaces presents different opportunities for a breach to occur. However, such an approach to risk management can greatly reduce the overall risk exposure or the surface that an attacker can exploit.

In the following section, we outline five approaches that integrate scanning, policy, and constant supervision for effective protection:

1. Manage Each Asset on the Map and Monitor It Continuously: Start by listing each subdomain, cloud instance, or device that touches your environment, even if it is marginally. Daily or weekly tracking tools can identify new ephemeral endpoints that appear on a daily or weekly basis. Integrating asset intelligence with SIEM or EDR solutions such as SentinelOne Singularity reveals new expansions or newly discovered vulnerabilities. Keeping the inventory up-to-date eliminates the angles of attack from sources that are concealed or have outdated systems.
2. Adopt Zero-Trust Micro-Segmentation: Instead of allowing an attacker to gain full control of an entire subnet, isolate microservices or users in such a way that even if they are compromised, they cannot move around freely. Internal traffic also needs re-authentication, token checks or some sort of restriction that prevents users from moving laterally. Enforce a strong role-based access control on containers, functions, or servers if they are hosted on-premise. This integration makes sure that a breach in one corner does not compromise your whole structure.
3. Strict Access Control & Credential Management: Implement multi-factor authentication for all the accounts that have administrative access and session cookies that have a short lifespan. Do not allow users to reuse passwords and log attempts to detect any security threats. For third-party integrations, the program should have its own set of credentials or API keys to monitor usage. Securing each piece with strong authentication significantly minimizes the potential points of entry for those who have obtained or guessed the credentials.
4. Security Audits and Patch Cycles: At a bare minimum, it is recommended that you perform static code analysis and dynamic pen tests at least quarterly or monthly. Integrate patch management tools with an internal policy that requires the application of any patches as soon as they are relevant. This synergy addresses known vulnerabilities on the spot. Delayed application of patches is one of the biggest sources of threats for criminals to infiltrate the system.
5. Promote a Security Culture & Continual Training: Online training, including phishing, social engineering, and device usage, constantly reminds the staff how infiltration can occur. Promote a “report first” culture if employees feel that they have received a suspicious email or if they are trying to bypass the device policies. This approach ensures that each user is an added layer of protection and not a point of vulnerability. In the long run, this results in a keen workforce that minimizes the possibility of successful manipulative hacking strategies.

How Can SentinelOne Help?

SentinelOne can provide sufficient attack surface protection by extending an infrastructure’s security coverage and threat detection capabilities. Its Offensive Security Engine™ with Verified Exploit Paths™ can detect threats and predict them before they arise. SentinelOne’s platform provides a mix of offensive and defensive security.

It takes a proactive approach to threat investigations by delivering unfettered visibility, industry-leading detection, and autonomous responses.

Products like Singularity Platform and Singularity Data Lake can ingest data from any source for threat intelligence and analysis. Organizations can protect every attack surface, container, VM, and endpoint, no matter the size or location. They can also ensure continuous compliance with the latest regulatory frameworks such as PCI-DSS, NIST, ISO 27001, and others. Singularity for Identity uplevels threat detection and response capabilities for identity-based surfaces such as Active Directory and Entra ID. SentinelOne’s agentless CNAPP can provide features such as: External Attack and Surface Management (EASM), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM), Cloud Detection & Response (CDR), Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CSPM), AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM), vulnerability assessments, cloud audits, and more.

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Conclusion

Ensuring that multiple attack vectors in the digital endpoints, physical hardware, and user-driven mistakes are eliminated has never been more critical. Real-life examples such as stolen government wallets and zero-day attacks demonstrate that any weak link can lead to mass data leaks or ransomware. To prevent such attacks, organizations must have a layered approach of identifying all the endpoints, quickly applying fixes to known vulnerabilities and educating employees against social engineering.

When these best practices are combined with high-level security measures it creates an organizational structure that is equipped with a good level of security. Continuous scanning, micro-segmentation, and user vigilance work in concert to reduce infiltration angles through each type of attack surface. Furthermore, integrating next-gen platforms such as SentinelOne Singularity allows for a comprehensive approach to threat detection and response across every domain of your enterprise.

Take your security to the next level request a SentinelOne Singularity demo on fully automated threat identification and response.

FAQs

1. What is an Attack Surface in Cybersecurity?

An attack surface refers to all possible avenues through which unauthorized access to a system or its data can be gained or through which data can be leaked. It ranges from APIs, servers, endpoints, and even ignorance of the staff. Identifying these routes is the first step in risk management since they help in the prioritization of risk reduction. Reducing each of the infiltration angles significantly decreases the probability of cyberattacks being successful.

2. What is Attack Surface Management (ASM)?

Attack surface management is the ongoing process of identifying, categorizing, and monitoring any and every potential target. It includes scanners, monitoring, and prioritization for each new or updated component of the software. When you are expanding your digital footprint, you can ensure that the angles of infiltration are kept in check as you manage each expansion systematically. ASM helps to control your total attack surface so it does not grow out of control.

3. What are the Different Types of Attack Surfaces?

There are four primary types of attack surface in modern security threats: cyber (web applications, cloud, IoT), physical (devices, servers, stolen devices), human (phishing, insiders), and social engineering (pretexting, baiting). Every category presents specific infiltration routes and requires different protection measures. All of them are important and need to be handled appropriately to enhance the overall security.

4. How do Attack Surfaces and Attack Vectors Differ?

Comparing attack surface vs attack vector has always been the first step to a better cyber security posture. To make it simple, the attack surface is the sum total of all the points of vulnerability, while the attack vector is the way or method through which the criminals operate. For instance, your digital endpoints are in the attack surface, but a phishing email or a zero-day exploit is the attack vector. Both concepts enable organizations not only to determine potential risks but also how they can be exploited by attackers.

5. What are the Best Practices for Securing Your Attack Surface?

Some of the best practices for securing attack surfaces begin with first identifying unknown or overlooked systems and then applying micro-segmentation and zero-trust to limit lateral movement. Furthermore, updating and patching software frequently, implementing a robust authentication system, and code scanning help protect digital domains. Also, phishing simulations and staff training slow down social engineering attacks. Each measure individually reduces your overall exposed attack surface area in a way that aligns with industry standards.

6. How can Organizations reduce their Total Attack Surface?

Organizations can integrate scanning tools, conduct continuous monitoring, and have strong patch management for every endpoint, whether cloud or on-premise. Also, zero-trust architectures keep the potential attack surface small, limiting the extent to which the intruders can compromise the network. Security awareness programs such as password hygiene and phishing also reduce overall human-driven breaches. Scanning and training must also change as the environment evolves so that no new avenue of approach is left unsecured.