Assessing Misconfigurations with Falcon Exposure Management

As most security teams know, vulnerabilities often steal the limelight with sensational headlines and zero-day exploits. However, lurking beneath the surface are misconfigurations — overlooked risks that can leave even well-protected systems exposed. 

Addressing these configuration errors is essential. Security configuration assessment (SCA), also known as configuration management, is the process of discovering unsafe configuration settings. SCA ensures environments remain resilient, compliant and secure. In this blog, we explore why managing configurations matters and how CrowdStrike Falcon® Exposure Management simplifies security hardening for modern enterprises.

What Are Misconfigurations, and Why Are They Important?

Misconfigurations occur when system settings deviate from security best practices, often because they were incorrectly configured or never changed from the default. Examples may include retaining default credentials like “admin/admin” or using weak password policies. Misconfigurations leave the door open for adversaries  and are often targeted because they’re easier to leverage than complex vulnerabilities. 

Addressing these risks requires security hardening, a systematic approach to align system settings with security benchmarks. SCA plays a crucial role in this process, ensuring systems are properly configured while helping organizations meet compliance standards such as PCI and NIST. Failing these compliance standards can have severe financial and reputational consequences for the entities involved.

How Do We Ensure Systems Are Configured Securely?

Modern enterprise environments contain numerous systems and applications, each with thousands of configuration settings. To manage this complexity, organizations rely on established security benchmarks like those from the Center for Internet Security (CIS) or Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs). These frameworks provide detailed, actionable guidance to ensure systems are secure and compliant. Companies wishing to be compliant with PCI, for example, often choose to use one of these benchmarks to implement security hardening against.

Traditional Configuration Assessment Tools Pose Challenges

The modern enterprise typically has thousands of servers and devices, and each of those can have thousands of configuration settings. Managing this entire ecosystem and enforcing the right configuration on the right system is nearly impossible to do manually. While there are numerous automated tools that are essential to make the process more manageable, they also have gaps that can open up an organization to risk in other ways:

• Complex infrastructure and lack of scale: Many solutions require cumbersome scanning appliances that are difficult to deploy and maintain.
• Slow results: Configuration scans can take hours to complete, especially in large environments.
• Lack of flexibility: Customizing benchmarks to suit unique business needs often demands significant technical expertise such as knowledge of scripting languages, complicating the process further.

As environments grow and diversify across geography, functions and business units, security teams often have to group various systems to apply various customized configuration policies in order to keep systems both secure and operational to suit business needs. This complexity makes managing configurations across distributed systems even more daunting. Many teams lack appropriate tooling to address these challenges. But failure to do so comes at a high cost, as does failure to appropriately patch or mitigate vulnerabilities.  

Eliminate Configuration Complexity with Falcon Exposure Management

Falcon Exposure Management transforms how organizations approach configuration management. Built on the lightweight, unified CrowdStrike Falcon® sensor, Falcon Exposure Management offers unmatched efficiency and scalability. Here’s how Falcon Exposure Management addresses the key challenges of traditional solutions:

• Zero maintenance, unparalleled scale: Falcon Exposure Management’s fully cloud-native design eliminates the need for scanning appliances or centralized infrastructure. There’s no more juggling with deployment, firewall rules or system updates. With Falcon Exposure Management, organizations can say goodbye to infrastructure headaches and say yes to scalability into millions of devices.
• Near-instantaneous results: Unlike traditional tools that require manual scans or take hours to complete, Falcon Exposure Management continuously collects configuration data. Its “collect once, use many times” architecture enables near real-time insights and reduces the impact on underlying systems.
• Ease of use and customization: Falcon Exposure Management excels with an intuitive UI and easy-to-use tools that make policy customization a cinch, including a patent-pending feature that allows security teams to customize policies directly from a golden image or template machine. This streamlines the creation of tailored benchmarks without the need for technical expertise.

Falcon Exposure Management uniquely prioritizes misconfigurations based on severity, giving teams clear guidance on what to address first. Detailed remediation instructions accompany each issue, making it easier to resolve configuration gaps across platforms like Windows, macOS and Linux.

Making Security Hardening Effortless

By addressing the complexities of configuration management head-on, Falcon Exposure Management empowers organizations to adopt secure settings at scale. Its combination of automation, flexibility and actionable insights enables teams to strengthen their security posture while reducing operational overhead.

If you’re an existing Falcon Exposure Management customer, give the Security Configuration Assessment capability a try by going to Exposure Management > Configuration Assessment > Dashboards. If you’re not using these modules already, talk to your CrowdStrike representative to request a demo.

Additional Resources