The Journey from Vulnerability Management to Exposure Management: A Critical and Timely Shift

After spending close to 6 years analyzing the cybersecurity market and authoring multiple Magic Quadrant reports, I’ve witnessed countless technology and market transitions and evolutions.

• On-prem deployment to SaaS
• Anti-virus to Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) to EDR to XDR
• VM to RBVM and many more…

Almost all of them were necessary and overdue. Enterprises have been doing Vulnerability management (VM) for more than 2 decades but it seldom delivered results as promised. The root cause was the gulf between the objectives of the VM program and the tools that existed.

With Gartner’s release of its first 2025 Magic Quadrant for Exposure Assessment Platforms in November 2025, the importance of exposure management got highlighted once again and this time with the key vendors who help the organizations implement the CTEM program.

The VM evolution journey over the last 15 years

2010 – 2016

2016 – 2021

2021 – 2024

2024 and beyond…

“First Class Upgrade of Vulnerability Management to Exposure Management”

Your vulnerability management should no longer focus on vulnerabilities as a unit. Instead, the focus should graduate to eliminating exposures. Businesses don’t care about individual vulnerabilities, but rather the exposures that can materially impact the business. They want visibility into all cyber risks and exposures, no matter where they originate.

Understanding Exposure Management

Exposure management reverses the approach: rather than taking a vulnerability-first approach, exposure management takes an “attackers’ view” and the business impact as the first input.  This represents a fundamental paradigm shift. Exposure management asks: 

“What can attackers actually exploit in my environment, what business damage can they cause with my given current security controls in place?”

This distinction is crucial. A critical risk vulnerability in a system behind multiple layers of security controls, network segmentation, and monitoring may pose far less real-world risk than a moderate vulnerability in an internet-facing application with weak authentication.

According to Gartner’s framework, Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) is a program, while Exposure Assessment Platform (EAP) is the technology platform that executes CTEM requirements. This isn’t just semantic but it reflects the reality that exposure management requires both a comprehensive framework and scalable technology.

The Five Phases of CTEM

Gartner’s CTEM framework outlines five critical phases that organizations must address:

1. Scoping:
Defining what needs protection based on business impact

2. Discovery:
Identifying assets, vulnerabilities, and misconfigurations across the attack surface

3. Prioritization:
Determining which exposures pose the greatest real-world risk.

4. Validation:
Testing whether exposures are actually exploitable given current controls

5. Mobilization:
Coordinating remediation efforts across teams

Read what Hive Pro’s Chief Product Officer, Jeelan Poola has to say:

Hive Pro Exposure Management Platform is the industry’s first platform to address all 5 steps of the CTEM framework in the same platform as defined by Gartner. See the Hive Pro platform live here. 

The validation phase is where exposure management truly differentiates itself from older VM implementations. Rather than assuming risk based on theoretical CVSS scores, modern platforms can simulate safe attacks to determine what an adversary could actually accomplish.

“Hive Pro is very proud that it has been recognized in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for the Exposure Assessment Platform (EAP).“

Jeelan Poola, Chief Product Officer, Hive Pro says “We believe this mention is the testament to the relentless hard work of our product teams, our threat research experts at HiveForce Labs, and our global teams. Our singular mission remains clear — to empower organizations to proactively stop attacks. 

We firmly believe in the power of the security community and make HiveForce labs intelligence and research that powers the Hive Pro platform, available for everyone, you can sign up here, he mentioned”

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Practical Guidance for Security Leaders/ CISOs

Not all assets are equally important. Your CTEM program should begin by identifying crown jewel assets and critical business processes. Exposure management without business context is just more sophisticated vulnerability management.

1. Demand validation capabilities :
Look for platforms that go beyond scoring to actually test exposures. Can the platform simulate attack paths? Does it account for existing security controls? Attack simulation isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s essential for understanding real-world risk.

2. Prioritize integration :
The most effective exposure management platforms combine data from multiple sources: vulnerability scanners (VM), cloud security posture management tools (CSPM), infrastructure-as-code scanners (IaC), Open-source, SAST, DAST and threat intelligence feeds. The goal is a unified risk view across your entire digital surface.

3. Consider vendor consolidation :
Many organizations have accumulated a sprawling collection of point security products. Modern exposure management platforms such as Hive Pro provide scanning capabilities across code, infrastructure, containers, web apps. and cloud environments. This consolidation can reduce both costs and operational complexity.

4. Leverage threat intelligence :
Effective prioritization requires understanding which vulnerabilities are being actively exploited. But don’t settle for generic global threat intel. Threat intelligence should be prioritized into Industry vertical and Geography as well.  Look for platforms that integrate current threat intelligence and can identify vulnerabilities associated with active threat actor campaigns.

5. Think beyond remediation:
Sometimes the right answer isn’t patching—it might be additional compensating controls, detection control, network segmentation, or enhanced monitoring. Your platform should support multiple response options.

6. Easy integration and unified view :
Organizations have multiple scanner tools and for an exposure management platform to be effective, it should integrate with the existing scanners. Look for platforms that give you native scanners and also the flexibility to integrate with the existing ones.

The Road Ahead

The release of Gartner’s first Magic Quadrant for Exposure Assessment Platforms signals market maturation. With 20 vendors participating in this inaugural evaluation, the exposure management category has moved from emerging to established.

For security leaders, this shift isn’t optional. The question isn’t whether to move from vulnerability management to exposure management, but how quickly you can make the transition. The attackers are already assessing your exposure—you need to beat them to it.

Organizations that successfully implement CTEM programs report significant improvements: faster incident response, more effective resource allocation, better alignment between security and business priorities, and ultimately, fewer successful attacks. Hear it from the CISOs who have made the transition to exposure management. 

Please get in touch with us to know how the Hive Pro Exposure Management platform can help you transform from vulnerability management to exposure management, here.