CTEM — Continuous Threat Exposure Management — is not a single product. It’s definitely not a platform. And according to Gartner, it’s not even a technology.
It’s a program.
That alone changes the way we should approach it.
Let’s break this down. CTEM isn’t just one fancy term — it’s really two concepts stitched together:
Continuous Exposure Management — the WHAT. What vulnerabilities exist? Are they exploitable? Are threat actors actively targeting them?
Threat Exposure Management — the HOW. How would a real-world attacker actually exploit these weaknesses, chaining them across your environment, factoring in your existing controls?
It’s about moving beyond dashboards filled with CVSS scores — and asking: What would an attacker do next?
Now, Gartner recently coined another term I actually like even more: Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV).
It nails the point — this is about validating exposures from an adversary’s perspective. Not just running scans. Not just listing issues. But understanding attack paths, privilege escalation, lateral movement — in your context.
Can you “buy” CTEM? No.
You build it.
You bring together existing tech — vuln management, red teaming, BAS, threat intel — and unify them under a single objective: understand and reduce real-world exposure.
CTEM doesn’t replace what you have. It makes it all work better, together.
That’s the shift. And that’s why CTEM matters.
- Prateek Bhajanka