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Types of Attack Surfaces in Cybersecurity (And How to Secure Them)

Do you know that in 2024, 3,158 data breaches were recorded in the United States alone? That’s terrifying for businesses.

Most breaches don’t come through the front door; they slip in through overlooked cracks in your digital armor or worse unknown assets tied to other parts of your organization. And many of these breaches happen because of the expanding attack surface due to hybrid working and much more. Even the 2025 Verizon DBIR cited an increase in known vulnerabilities with patches available as a top source for compromise, bucking a downward trend from the previous issues. More on that further below.

As organizations grow more digital, understanding types of attack surfaces in cybersecurity becomes mission-critical. In this article, we’ll break down what the attack surface meaning is, why it matters, and how you can reduce it before attackers find their way in.

So, let’s do that.

What Is an Attack Surface in Cybersecurity?

cyberattcks exploit known

An attack surface is the total number of points in a cloud and/or on-premise infrastructure where an unauthorized user, like a threat actor, can try to enter to cause havoc or extract data. The attack surface definition includes everything from applications, websites, networks, devices and cloud infrastructure and services, and commonly these are manifested as exposed login pages and cloud misconfigurations to employee endpoints and third-party integrations. Basically, it’s the available area for potentially initiating a cyberattack.

Common attack surface examples include applications, websites, networks, devices, cloud infrastructure and services, and third-party integrations.

In simple terms, the larger your attack surface, the more chances a threat actor has to find a threat exposure, or weak spot.

Attack surfaces can include:

  • Digital Attack Surface / Cyber Asset Attack Surface
  • Physical Attack Surface
  • Cloud Attack Surface
  • Social Engineer Attack Surface / Human Attack Surface

In fact, 70% of cyberattacks exploit known vulnerabilities that remain unpatched in an organization’s security attack surface. This shows how important it is to understand and manage every potential entry point through attack surface management practices.

 

Attack Surface Example: 

Imagine a company with a website, mobile app, third-party plugins, internal cloud tools, and remote employees. Each of these creates entry points. If one login system or outdated API isn’t properly secured, the entire network could be compromised.

Worried About How Big Your Attack Surface Is?

FortifyData’s Attack Surface Management Platform gives you real-time visibility, continuous attack surface discovery, and automated monitoring of your full attack surface.

Five Main Types of Attack Surfaces in Cybersecurity

Attack surfaces are the doors and windows into your organization’s digital world. Every weakness – digital, hardware or personnel – that could be exploited by attackers is part of that surface.

To truly secure a business, you must understand each type of surface, how they work, what can go wrong, and how attack surface management helps mitigate risk.

Let’s explore the five main types in detail.

1. Digital Attack Surface

security exposures

Do you know 80% of security exposures are found in cloud environments? And that’s part of the digital attack surface. It includes all internet-facing assets and digital entry points that can be exploited remotely. This includes everything from websites to APIs, email servers, and cloud applications.

This digital attack surface, sometimes referred to as a cyber asset attack surface management (CAASM), is often the largest and most dynamic. Every code change, every misconfigured cloud bucket, and every exposed API adds a new potential risk. Tools like FortifyData help with attack surface discovery, continuously detecting and mapping new entry points through attack surface management solutions.

What’s Included in the Digital Attack Surface?

The key components of the digital attack surface are:

  1. Web Applications: Web apps are common entry points. Vulnerabilities in login forms, outdated plugins, or improper input validation can allow attackers to gain unauthorized access or inject malicious code.
  2. APIs (Application Programming Interfaces): APIs often lack proper authentication or rate-limiting, exposing sensitive business logic. They expand rapidly in modern architectures, creating a hidden attack surface vector.
  3. Email Systems: Emails are frequently targeted through phishing and malware delivery. Open email servers or poor spam filtering increase this surface.

Risk and Solutions for Digital Attack Surfaces

The most common risks in digital attack surfaces include SQL injection, phishing, cross-site scripting (XSS), credential stuffing, and data exfiltration. To reduce attack surface and mitigate the risks, organizations must implement attack surface analysis using tools that continuously test and identify new vulnerabilities.

Ensure that all web applications follow secure development practices. This means validating input, avoiding outdated libraries, and performing regular penetration testing. Moreover, secure your APIs with proper authentication, encryption, and rate-limiting to prevent abuse of your digital attack surface.

2. Physical Attack Surface

physical security

The physical attack surface includes all the tangible assets and entry points an attacker can exploit through direct or on-site access. This covers everything from laptops and USB ports to server rooms, printers, and even security badges.

Adoption of cloud service providers can help in this regard as they focus on the physical security of their data centers for all their clients using their services. Companies that have their own infrastructure must prioritize the hardening of physical security controls to minimize the vulnerability to these physical assets.

In addition, as more organizations adopt remote work and hybrid setups, the number of unmanaged or off-prem devices grows. And you’d be surprised to know that 62% of organizations report gaps in their physical security policies which increase physical attacks in cyber security.

What’s Included in the Physical Attack Surface?

Here’s what’s included in the physical attack surface:

  1. Office Hardware: Devices used by employees can be stolen, misplaced, or tampered with. If they lack encryption or biometric protection, a thief could access sensitive files, cached passwords, or login sessions.
  2. USB Ports and External Drives: Unsecured USB drives are a top attack surface vector. An attacker can drop an infected USB device in a parking lot, knowing someone might plug it into a company system out of curiosity.
  3. Employee Personal Devices (BYOD): Bring Your Own Device policies create invisible risks. If employee smartphones are not secured or monitored, they can become entry points through unprotected apps or compromised home networks.
  4. Servers and Network Infrastructure: Server rooms that are not properly locked or monitored can be physically compromised. Attackers can plug in malicious devices, alter configurations, or install hardware keyloggers to intercept data silently.

Risks and Solutions for Physical Attack Surfaces

The most significant risks in this category include device theft, tailgating, USB-based malware, unauthorized access to hardware, and loss of unencrypted data. Organizations often underestimate how easily someone can walk into a server room or plug into a live Ethernet port.

To mitigate these risks, secure all workstations and laptops with full-disk encryption and auto-lock features. Then, train employees to never leave devices unattended in public areas or shared spaces.

Badge access systems should include multi-factor authentication and be backed by visitor management protocols. Integrated attack surface management tools can also help log physical asset access where supported.

3. Social Engineering Attack Surface

social engineering

The social engineering attack surface targets your people, not your systems. It exploits human psychology, like curiosity, trust, urgency, and fear, to trick employees into giving up sensitive data or access. It’s one of the most cyber security attack surfaces and has increased by 464% in 2024.

Cybercriminals use tactics like phishing emails, fake support calls, or even in-person manipulation to trick employees into revealing passwords, downloading malware, or giving unauthorized access.

What’s Included in the Social Engineering Attack Surface?

The key components of a social engineering attack surface include:

  1. Spear Phishing Emails: These messages look like they come from legitimate sources, such as banks or coworkers, but they trick users into clicking malicious links or revealing login credentials.
  2. Phone-Based Attacks (Vishing): Attackers pretend to be from IT, HR, or another internal department and pressure employees over the phone to give credentials or install software. These calls often use urgency and authority to force quick decisions.
  3. SMS Interception: One method for MFA is the use of SMS passcode generation. While this is helpful, this is becoming an easy step in the MFA process to intercept and the threat actors can obtain the secure code meant for the authorized individual.
  4. Impersonation and Tailgating: In physical settings, attackers may pretend to be delivery personnel or IT staff to gain building access. Once inside, they may plug into devices or snoop around for unattended systems.
  5. Baiting and USB Drops: Dropping infected USB drives near offices or conferences, hoping someone will plug one into a work device. The malware can silently install backdoors or ransomware. 

Risks and Solutions for Social Engineering Attack Surfaces

The risks here are direct and devastating. A single mistake, like clicking a fake login link, can give attackers a foothold deep inside your infrastructure. Worse, these attacks are hard to detect because they often don’t involve technical vulnerabilities.

To defend against social engineering, start with continuous security awareness training. Employees need to recognize red flags like urgent tone, unknown senders, or unexpected attachments. Implement phishing simulations to test and improve readiness.

4.Cloud Attack Surface

cloud data insights
Source: Nordlayer

Did you know that 27% of organizations experienced a public cloud security incident in the past year? That’s because the cloud attack surface is growing faster than most teams can manage.

As businesses adopt multi-cloud and hybrid environments, the number of potential cloud attack surface vulnerabilities expands. The cloud attack surface includes all externally and internally exposed cloud-based assets.

What’s Included in the Cloud Attack Surface?

The main components of a cloud attack surface include:

  1. Cloud Storage (e.g., AWS S3, Azure Blob): Misconfigured buckets can be publicly accessible, exposing sensitive files and customer data. Attackers actively scan for these vulnerabilities.
  2. Virtual Machines and Compute Instances: Unpatched systems or poorly managed images running in cloud environments can become easy targets for remote code execution or privilege escalation.
  3. Cloud APIs and Endpoints: Cloud services expose APIs that, if left unauthenticated or improperly managed, can become vulnerable to brute-force attacks, data leaks, or unauthorized access.

Risks and Solutions for Cloud Attack Surfaces

Common risks include cloud misconfigurations, data exposure, privilege escalation, and supply chain compromises. And many companies believe that in the future these cloud security failures will be due to customer’s fault.

To reduce attack surface of your cloud surface, implement least privilege access using strict IAM policies. Ensure your organization’s works suite – Google, Novell, Oracle, or Microsoft 365 are leveraging the security features and tools like what’s offered in Microsoft 365 security. Moreover, continuously scan cloud environments for misconfigurations, open ports, and default credentials using attack surface management tools like FortifyData.

5.Human Attack Surface

Source: Secure Frame

The human attack surface encompasses all aspects of human behavior that make people susceptible to mistakes, misconfigurations, and poor decisions, thereby exposing an organization to cyber threats. In fact, 74% of all data breaches involve a human element.

As systems become more secure, attackers often exploit the fact that humans are overworked, undertrained, or distracted. And because people operate across digital, physical, and social domains, this surface touches every part of your organization.

What’s Included in the Human Attack Surface?

Here’s what’s included in the human attack surface:

  1. Misconfigurations: Employees may unintentionally set weak permissions, leave dashboards exposed, or upload sensitive files to public folders. These errors often occur when users lack proper training.
  2. Poor Credentials: Using the same password across work and personal accounts means one breach can lead to another. Weak passwords or failing to use MFA (multi-factor authentication) create easy access points.
  3. Insider Threats: Disgruntled employees or those leaving a company might steal data or sabotage systems. Even well-meaning insiders can leak information by sending files to the wrong recipients.
  4. Third-Party Staff: People outside the core team often have access to internal systems but may not follow the same security standards. Temporary or contract workers can unknowingly create high-risk scenarios.

Risks and Solutions for Human Attack Surfaces

The human attack surface poses persistent risks like data leaks, configuration oversights, credential theft, and compliance failures. Even though it’s hard to eliminate, attack surface reduction begins with awareness.

For this, regular security training is essential, but it’s only the start. Pair education with enforcement. Automate password policies and use single sign-on (SSO), MFA or passwordless MFA to minimize credential-based risks.

Don’t Let Your Attack Surface Be the Reason You’re Next

As we’ve explored, your attack surface is more than a technical concern. It’s the collection of everything that makes your business vulnerable. An effective attack surface management program is a fundamental element of a continuous threat exposure management program.

Having an up-to-date asset inventory has always been a challenge, making the Identification of these weak points, manually, is nearly impossible. The average organization has over 1,200 exposed assets, and many go undiscovered until after a breach. The only way to obtain an advantage is to adopt a continuous and automated approach to attack surface management.

That’s where FortifyData steps in.

FortifyData’s Attack Surface Management (ASM) platform gives you an attacker’s-eye view of your entire digital footprint. It continuously identifies your asset footprint, enriching the findings with cyber threat intelligence to provide a risk-informed remediation prioritization for your team.

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FAQs

An attack surface is the total collection of points where an attacker could try to enter or interact with a system. It includes hardware, software, users, and processes. An attack vector, on the other hand, is the specific method or path an attacker uses to exploit a vulnerability within that surface.

The best attack surface mapping tools include FortifyData, Microsoft Defender EASM, CyCognito, Rapid7 InsightVM, and Assetnote. These tools help discover internet-facing assets, assess vulnerabilities, and prioritize risks. They are essential for identifying unknown exposures.

Start by disabling unused services (updating DNS records as well), enforcing least privilege access, and using CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management) tools. Also, monitor configurations, review IAM roles, and encrypt data at rest and in transit to limit exposure.

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