The attack surface isn't just what's on the network

At Strike, “your attack surface” doesn't just mean your domains, IP addresses, or cloud accounts. It means every entry point an attacker could actually reach, digital or physical.

But not every asset should be discovered or tested in the same way.

That's why Strike covers the attack surface through two complementary layers: automated discovery and continuous testing for assets that are constantly changing, and expert-led assessments for environments where context, controlled execution, and human judgment matter.

Both are managed through the same Strike platform, bringing exposures into a centralized view so security teams can understand what is reachable, what represents a real risk, and what needs to be fixed.

What gets discovered automatically

Attack surfaces change faster than most asset inventories.

A new subdomain gets deployed. An API endpoint is exposed. A cloud resource is misconfigured. Infrastructure appears that was never added to the security team's spreadsheet.

Strike's Live Asset Radar helps uncover that gap.

Starting from a known asset, such as a domain or application, Strike continuously maps related internet-facing assets, including subdomains, APIs, services, and other exposed infrastructure that may not have been manually documented.

This allows security teams to expand visibility beyond the assets they already know about and identify shadow infrastructure as their external attack surface evolves.

The same principle extends to cloud environments.

By connecting an AWS account to Strike Cloud, teams can automatically map cloud assets such as compute instances, storage buckets, databases, and IAM roles and permissions. Strike continuously evaluates this environment to identify exposures such as publicly accessible resources, excessive permissions, missing encryption, exposed secrets, or disabled logging.

Together, these capabilities provide automated visibility across a changing set of external infrastructure, network-exposed assets, cloud platforms, applications, APIs, and identity-related cloud permissions.

But automated discovery is only one part of attack surface coverage.

Some attack surfaces require a different approach

Not every environment can, or should, be handled through recurring automated scans.

Internal infrastructure, identity systems, operational technology, specialized workloads, and physical environments often require deeper context and carefully controlled testing.

Strike covers these environments through expert-led Pentesting and Red Teaming engagements, requested and managed from within the same platform.

The scope is defined according to the environment and the risks the organization needs to validate. Findings are then centralized in Strike's Vulnerability Manager, alongside findings from other testing activities, providing a consistent workflow for evidence, remediation, retesting, and reporting.

This allows Strike to extend security validation across a broader range of asset types and attack surfaces.

Identity and access

Identity is an attack surface of its own.

Beyond automatically mapping AWS IAM roles and permissions through Strike Cloud, expert-led assessments can evaluate authentication and authorization controls, entitlements, permissions, and privilege-escalation paths across identity and access management environments.

The objective isn't simply to identify which identities exist, but to understand how an attacker could abuse access relationships to move further into an environment.

On-premises and internal infrastructure

Some of an organization's most important systems never touch the public internet.

Internal networks, network infrastructure, legacy systems, and internally hosted services can be assessed through scoped engagements, including environments behind VPNs or otherwise unreachable from the external attack surface.

This extends validation beyond what an internet-facing discovery engine can see.

Physical and virtual hosts and containers

Attack surfaces also exist at the workload level.

Expert-led assessments can be scoped around physical or virtual hosts and containerized environments when an organization needs deeper validation of a particular system or architecture.

Rather than treating these assets as isolated inventory entries, testing focuses on the vulnerabilities and attack paths that could make them exploitable.

IoT and OT

Connected devices and operational technology introduce a different set of constraints.

In these environments, aggressive automated testing may create operational risk or simply fail to account for the context in which the technology operates.

IoT and OT assessments can therefore require carefully scoped, expert-led testing designed around the characteristics and operational requirements of the environment.

Physical premises

Not every attack starts with a packet.

Red Teaming can extend beyond digital infrastructure to physical attack vectors, including physical access controls, badge systems, tailgating scenarios, and on-site social engineering.

The question is the same one an attacker would ask: what actually stops me from getting in?

One attack surface, one place to manage exposures

The testing method may change depending on the asset. The way teams manage the resulting risk shouldn't.

Findings generated across Strike's testing activities are centralized in the platform, giving security teams a consistent way to review technical evidence, understand severity and impact, track remediation, request retesting, and report on exposures.

That matters because an attack surface isn't useful as an inventory alone.

Knowing that an asset exists is only the beginning. Security teams also need to understand whether it is exposed, whether that exposure is exploitable, and what should be prioritized first.

This is where discovery and offensive security validation come together.

Coverage isn't a checkbox

Attackers don't organize attack surfaces into neat product categories. They look for whatever is reachable.

A forgotten subdomain, an exposed API, an over-permissioned cloud identity, an internal system, a containerized workload, an operational device, or even a poorly controlled building entrance can all become part of the same attack path.

That's why Strike combines automated discovery and continuous testing with expert-led security assessments across external, cloud, internal, identity, operational, and physical environments.

Different assets require different testing methods. The goal remains the same: understand what an attacker can reach, validate what represents real risk, and bring that evidence into one place so teams can act on it.

Have an asset or environment that doesn't fit the usual categories? Talk to us about how Strike can scope it as part of an expert-led assessment.

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