In many companies, the summer months are considered a quiet period. Employees are on vacation, key contacts are hard to reach and temporary arrangements replace standard procedures. Cybercriminals know exactly that – and exploit it deliberately. Firewalls, Zero Trust, endpoint security – none of that helps much if a single employee clicks on a phishing email. People are the most effective target. They can’t be patched. And they’re particularly vulnerable in the summer.

To mitigate the rapidly expanding attack surface in enterprises, new success factors are required. In this context, two disciplines are currently gaining significant importance: IT asset management and exposure management. In the field of IT security in particular, these approaches are converging into a critical aspect. Why? Because companies that do not have a complete understanding of their digital assets and the security risks associated with them cannot effectively protect them. This article examines the fundamentals, differences, and concrete value of modern, security-focused asset and exposure management.

Many companies are familiar with this situation: The infrastructure somehow works, but no one can really explain why anymore. Applications are moving to the cloud, employees are working from anywhere, and the traditional network increasingly feels like a stopgap solution that was never built for this hybrid IT reality. It is precisely to address this gap that a concept has emerged that amounts to nothing less than a structural reboot: Secure Access Service Edge (SASE).