Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)

This article was updated on December 22nd, 2025.

The (short) history of the cybersecurity landscape is one of many vendors trying to solve a coherent set of problems in different ways, with inevitable feature consolidation until 1-2 vendors dominate a particular space. For the past five years the “external” exposure category has been fragmented between cyber threat intelligence, digital risk protection services, and external attack surface management.

At Flare we fundamentally believe that security organizations need to be able to derive the core value out of all three of these categories leveraged in a single platform. As a result, we are building a unified and comprehensive Threat Exposure Management platform that provides the core, actionable functionalities of EASM, CTI, and DRPS with a focus on enabling customers to meet a diverse set of use-cases in a single platform.

How do we define Threat Exposure Management and Continuous Threat Exposure Management?

Threat Exposure Management (TEM) as a category is the unification of multiple disparate technologies into a single coherent platform to manage external high-risk exposure. Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) is the set of people, processes, and technologies that enable threat exposure management. To put it simply, TEM is the platform, CTEM is an overall process designed to reduce risk from exposure.

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM): Brief Overview

What is the history of CTEM and why is it important?

CTEM was a term coined by Gartner and emerged as a response to the dynamic and increasingly sophisticated nature of cyber threat exposure. Its development can be traced back to the need for more proactive and continuous security measures, as opposed to the reactive approaches of traditional cybersecurity. We see CTEM potentially unifying more types of platforms than just Threat Exposure Management into a single process. For example, breach and attack simulation, vulnerability management, security posture management, and attack path analysis could all be orchestrated under a comprehensive CTEM program.

What is the growing significance of CTEM in cybersecurity?

The growing significance of CTEM in cybersecurity lies in its ability to provide continuous visibility and real-time insights into an organization’s threat landscape with a lens of how attackers actually compromise environments. The threat landscape is changing rapidly and dramatically in the 2020s. AI and widespread enterprise identity exposure are rapidly altering traditional threat vectors that have impacted organizations while organizations struggle with expanding tech debt and a new and larger attack surface driven by AI adoption.

Will CTEM replace cyber threat intelligence (CTI), external attack surface management (EASM), and digital risk protection (DRP)?

We expect that within a few years companies will universally be purchasing one platform to replace legacy fragmented solutions. Cyber threat intelligence (CTI), external attack surface management (EASM), and digital risk protection (DRP) all benefit from being unified into a single platform to enable telemetry, integration with the larger security stack, and simplicity. Threat Exposure Management integrates and enhances these disciplines.

What is the purpose and role of CTEM in cybersecurity?

The purpose and role of CTEM in cybersecurity are to provide continuous and comprehensive insight into an organization’s threat landscape, enabling proactive risk management. It plays a critical role in identifying vulnerabilities, assessing their potential impact, and prioritizing remediation efforts to minimize the likelihood and impact of cyber attacks.

What are the steps in the cycle of Continuous TEM? (as defined by Gartner)

As defined by Gartner, the cycle of continuous TEM involves several key steps:

• Scope all of your organization’s external threats and assets that include but are not limited to devices, applications, third-party vendors, and source code repositories.
• Discover all risks (and possible impacts) associated with all the items scoped in the previous step.
• Prioritize the most urgent threats to address, especially related to the highest-value assets in your organization. 
• Validate all possible pathways to attack along with your organization’s planned responses appropriately to ensure that the most significant threats are addressed. Ensure that all business stakeholders are in agreement on steps to remediation.
• Mobilize your CTEM plan into action by communicating the steps with your security team and relevant stakeholders. Though some remediation can be automated, a comprehensive CTEM approach includes involving everyone across the organization. Making sure the relevant security and business leaders are aligned streamlines the CTEM process for faster responses. 

Why Do You Need CTEM in Today’s Cybersecurity Landscape?

Why are traditional methods of cybersecurity insufficient for the evolving threat landscape?

Traditional methods of cybersecurity, which often rely on periodic assessments and reactive responses, are insufficient for the evolving threat landscape due to their lack of real-time visibility and slow response times. As cyber threats become more advanced and frequent, these methods fail to provide the continuous monitoring and rapid response required to effectively manage these risks.

CTEM is essential due to its proactive approach in identifying and managing threats. As cyber threats become more sophisticated and frequent, organizations need a strategy that not only responds to incidents but also anticipates and mitigates potential risks in real time. CTEM provides this capability, enhancing an organization’s resilience against cyber attacks.

What are the benefits of CTEM?

The benefits of CTEM include:

• Enhanced security posture: By continuously monitoring and assessing threats, CTEM helps maintain a stronger defense against cyber attacks.
• Proactive risk management: It enables organizations to proactively identify and address vulnerabilities before they are exploited.
• Improved resource allocation: CTEM assists in prioritizing remediation efforts, ensuring that resources are focused on the most critical vulnerabilities.
• Compliance and regulatory alignment: Continuous monitoring and management of cyber threats help in maintaining compliance with regulatory standards.
• Reduced incident response time: CTEM’s real-time insights allow for quicker response to threats, reducing the potential impact of cyber incidents.

What You Get with Flare’s Threat Expsoure Management Solution

How does Flare answer CTEM needs?

Flare aligns with the CTEM framework by providing continuous monitoring of critical digital assets that exist across the external attack surface such as domains, usernames, brand mentions, and more. It effectively addresses several key steps of the CTEM cycle – in particular discovery, prioritization, and remediation- enabling organizations to more effectively manage their security posture and take action on threat exposures as they emerge. 

How does Flare’s growth focus on answering CTEM use cases? 

Flare’s growth is centered around expanding its capabilities in providing “maximum value information,” AI-powered threat intelligence, and autonomous remediation actions. This approach helps organizations solve for the challenges related to prioritizing and taking action on the threat exposures that attackers leverage the most – domains for social engineering infrastructure, stealer logs to compromise user accounts, and third-party related attack vectors. The end result is a much smaller window of opportunity for attackers and a more resilient security posture. 

What are the key benefits of the Flare CTEM solution? 

• Provides ongoing awareness of your external threat exposures, with automated clear & dark web monitoring, allowing for immediate identification and swift response to emerging threats
• Summarizes and contextualizes activity from the world’s most notorious online cybercrime hubs
• Streamlines the threat management process and enhances analyst efficiency

With Flare, security teams can act upon actionable intelligence to identify and mitigate external threats faster.

CTEM and Flare

The Flare Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution empowers organizations to proactively detect, prioritize, and mitigate the types of exposures commonly exploited by threat actors. Our platform automatically scans the clear & dark web and prominent threat actor communities 24/7 to discover unknown events, prioritize risks, and deliver actionable intelligence you can use instantly to improve security.

Flare integrates into your security program in 30 minutes and often replaces several SaaS and open source tools. Learn more by signing up for our free trial.