Preemptive Exposure Management: The Proactive Cybersecurity Blueprint CISOs Need Beyond CTEM

Cyber-attacks are moving faster than ever: ~40,000 new CVEs were logged in 2024 alone a 38 % jump from the prior year and adversaries are now harnessing generative AI to chain those flaws into attacks at machine speed. Traditional “find-and-patch” programs cannot keep pace. Preemptive Exposure Management (PEM) offers CISOs a practical way forward by unifying continuous discovery, risk-based validation and automated remediation so exposures are removed before threat actors can strike. This brief explains why PEM matters now, how it extends Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM), and the concrete steps security leaders can take to embed PEM into their operating model backed by recent data, Gartner guidance and real-world healthcare examples.

Why the Shift to Preemptive?

• CVE volume is exploding. 2024 set a seventh straight record with ~40,000 published vulnerabilities, representing 15 % of all CVEs ever disclosed. 
• AI super-charges offense. Research highlighted by Dark Reading shows automated phishing kits, deep-fake lures and LLM-generated malware are shortening attacker dwell time and widening the victim pool. 
• Unknown assets equal unknown risk. In a recent CSO Online survey, 73 % of CISOs admitted that incidents in the past year stemmed from assets they didn’t know existed. 

Faced with this velocity, even mature Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) programmes that discover and prioritise vulnerabilities still struggle to close remediation gaps fast enough. Preemptive Exposure Management’s objective is to shrink those gaps to zero.

Analyst momentum‍

Gartner’s 2025 emerging-tech note, Build Preemptive Security Solutions to Improve Threat Detection (Part 2), positions PEM as “a progressive approach to executing exposure management” and lists Vicarius as a sample vendor. Separate Gartner research also elevates CTEM to a top strategic trend for 2024. Together, these signals confirm that preemptive discipline is becoming board-level language.

Defining PEM in the CISO Playbook

Unlike reactive vulnerability management, PEM insists that every stage discovery, validation, fix operates in a single feedback loop that can run autonomously when risk is clear, or request human sign-off when business context demands. An example from The Hacker News shows how orchestrated workflows cut CVE ticketing effort by 60%, freeing analysts for higher-order work. 

PEM vs. CTEM: Complementary, Not Competing‍

CTEM provides the programme structure scoping, discovery, prioritisation, validation and mobilisation. Preemptive Exposure Management (PEM) accelerates each step and removes the human latency that often delays patching after prioritisation. Think of PEM as the execution engine beneath Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM):

• Discovery: Asset inventory updates in minutes, not days, using continuous sensors.
• Prioritisation: AI predicts the most probable attack paths, weighting reachability and business impact. 
• Validation: Safe exploitation or BAS confirms whether controls truly block the path.
• Mobilisation: Automated scripts or agentless fixes close the gap no swivel-chair to ITSM required.

Case in Point: Healthcare’s Mirth Connect RCE‍

Healthcare networks illustrate why Preemptive Exposure Management is essential. In May 2024, CISA added CVE-2023-43208 (unauthenticated RCE in NextGen Mirth Connect) to its Known Exploited Vulnerability catalogue. Because many imaging servers run end-of-life OS versions, patching lagged. Attackers weaponised the flaw to pivot into clinical environments, forcing providers to isolate devices and delay patient care.

A preemptive program would have:

1. Discovered vulnerable Mirth instances on-prem or cloud through continuous scanning.
2. Validated exploitability in context (e.g., reachable from internet, credentials absent).
3. Auto-patched or containerised an up-to-date image, quarantining unpatchable nodes via network segmentation rules pushed directly to firewalls.
4. Measured residual risk via simulated exploit replay.

Bain & Company later reported that 70 % of healthcare organisations impacted by the February 2024 Change Healthcare outage are now increasing cyber-spend, with PEM-style automation high on the list. 

Building a PEM Roadmap

Quick wins (0-90 days)

1. Inventory everything – Deploy external Attack Surface Management (ASM) plus internal discovery to eliminate blind spots.
2. Create a living risk graph – Correlate exposures, control gaps and asset criticality.
3. Automate low-risk patches – Start with third-party apps where reboot impact is minimal; success builds trust.

Milestones (90-365 days)

• Integrate exploit intelligence feeds (e.g., CISA KEV, commercial threat intel) to trigger just-in-time mitigations.
• Adopt simulation-backed validation to weed out false positives and prove control efficacy.
• Expand automation guardrails – Allow emergency rollback, change-window alignment and C-Suite notifications.

Metrics to track

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Integration & Ecosystem Considerations‍

No single product covers every asset type. PEM success hinges on open APIs and data exchange with EDR, SIEM/SOAR, CMDB and ITSM tools. Gartner’s 2025 Market Guide for Micro-segmentation underscores the rise of segmentation as a complementary control to block lateral movement once exposures are found.  When selecting vendors, ensure they can:

• Pull asset and vulnerability data from existing scanners.
• Push remediation actions (scripts, ACL updates, de-provisioning) to orchestrators.
• Export validated results for audit and compliance.

The AI Multiplier‍

Generative AI will soon write mitigation scripts, predict exploit timelines and even negotiate downtime windows directly with service owners all at machine speed. Dark Reading warns that adversaries are already weaponising similar models to craft polymorphic attacks. CISOs should commit budget now to AI-ready PEM platforms, or risk falling into a perpetual reaction loop.

From Preemptive to Preventive: The Road Ahead‍

PEM is not a silver bullet; it is a disciplined operating model that makes prevention practical again. By tightly coupling exposure discovery with automated closure, organisations can cut mean time-to-exploit from weeks to hours and, in many cases, remove low-complexity attacks entirely. Early adopters in financial services and healthcare report up to 80% faster vulnerability resolution after shifting to preemptive workflows. 

Final Thoughts‍

CISOs today wrestle with an attack surface that is expanding faster than their teams can scan, let alone patch. PEM reframes the problem: don’t just prioritise risk erase it before it’s reachable. By embedding continuous visibility, high-fidelity validation and automated remediation into one closed loop, PEM delivers measurable reductions in exposure, incident costs and auditor findings. The sooner organisations adopt a preemptive mindset, the sooner they reclaim the initiative from adversaries who are already operating at machine speed.

Further Reading

• SecurityWeek – Cyber Insights 2025: Attack Surface Management 
• CSO Online – More Assets, More Attack Surface, More Risk 
• CISA – Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalogue 

Taking the first step is simple: map what you can’t see, automate what you can’t reach, and validate everything continuously. That is the essence of Preemptive Exposure Management.