Hidden digital assets and supplier-linked exposure can create cyber risks that fall outside your organisation’s official security inventory.
Attackers may be able to see parts of a company’s digital footprint that its own cybersecurity team is not monitoring.
Forgotten domains, exposed log-in credentials, old remote-access portals, cloud services, and supplier-operated systems can all create potential entry points into an organisation.
These exposures are not always the result of a major security failure. They can be created through normal business activity, including growth, supplier relationships, acquisitions, and decentralised technology decisions.
The risk emerges when these assets are not added to an official inventory, assigned to an accountable owner, or included in ongoing security monitoring. This creates a gap between what an organisation believes it manages and what an attacker can see. It can include forgotten infrastructure, inherited assets, exposed identities, leaked credentials, and services operated by third parties.
They look for exposed services, credentials, poorly protected portals, and other visible assets that can be connected to create a viable attack path.
A forgotten remote-access portal may appear relatively harmless on its own. The same may be true of an exposed credential or an old domain. However, the risk changes when these findings can be linked.
For example, leaked credentials associated with an exposed remote-access service or supplier environment could provide an attacker with a more credible route into the organisation.
The scale of compromises reported in South Africa highlights why this visibility matters.
The Information Regulator registered 2,374 security compromises in the 2024/25 financial year. This volume is projected to scale further, nearing 2,500 reports for 2025/26.
South African organisations also have clear obligations under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).
The Information Regulator has stated that responsible parties do not have discretion to decide whether a cybersecurity compromise is serious enough to report.
Where a compromise occurs at an operator, the operator must inform the responsible party, which is then responsible for notifying the regulator and about affected data subjects where required.
This makes it important for organisations to understand whether an external finding belongs to them and see whether it is still active, could be exploited, and could affect personal information or critical systems.
The first step is to find your external exposure.
Cybersecurity teams have to decide which of the findings are relevant, identify who is responsible for them, and determine which of the vulnerabilities require immediate action.
An effective external exposure assessment should help organisations:
This prioritisation is critical.
A long list of findings does not necessarily provide a useful picture of risk. Cybersecurity teams need to distinguish between outdated or irrelevant information and exposures that warrant urgent investigation.
This visibility is what Snode’s Free Threat Exposure Assessment (TEM) is designed to provide.
Snode TEM provides a view of what an attacker would see from outside your organisation by examining the organisation’s external digital footprint.
The assessment is passive and uses publicly available information, meaning it does not require network access, agents, credentials, or access to internal systems.
It identifies visible exposure indicators, validates their relevance, and provides observations that can support further investigation, remediation planning, and internal risk discussions.
