Exploring Unified Security Exposure Management (USEM)
Unified Security Exposure Management (USEM) is a platform that brings together infrastructure, application, container, and configuration exposures into one unified experience.
Unified Security Exposure Management overview
USEM is an evolution of existing Vulnerability Response modules including Application Vulnerability Management, Configuration Compliance and Container Vulnerability Response. It’s designed to provide a single, integrated workspace for managing all types of security exposures across an organization’s attack surface. Rather than focusing solely on vulnerabilities, USEM consolidates multiple exposure types such as policy violations, misconfigurations across asset types into one unified platform. This approach enables security and IT teams to visualize, prioritize, and remediate risks holistically.
Unified Security Exposure Management users
| User | Description |
|---|---|
| Administrator | Administers and configures the USEM platform and integrated third-party vulnerability tools, ensuring smooth data ingestion and integration health. The role involves setting up workflows, SLAs, notifications, and grouping rules, troubleshooting issues, and maintaining operational efficiency. It also manages role assignments, permissions, and access controls across USEM and connected applications, providing full administrative oversight for exposure management processes. |
| Vulnerability Analyst/ Manager | Monitors the organization’s overall risk posture across integrated environments, ensuring accurate asset discovery and classification for vulnerability correlation. This role serves as an escalation point for remediation teams, assigns remediation tasks based on asset ownership and severity, and organizes vulnerabilities into dynamic remediation tasks to streamline prioritization. Additionally, the role delivers actionable dashboards and reports to track remediation progress, highlight critical exposures, and communicate the current risk posture to stakeholders. |
| Remediation Owner | Drives remediation of assigned exposure findings, submitting exception requests for issues that can’t be resolved within defined timeframes, and navigating internal change management processes to implement fixes. The role also involves monitoring assigned workload to track progress and ensure compliance. With permissions to view and update findings and remediation tasks, access all vulnerability entries and solutions, and add internal notes, the Remediation Owner plays a key role in reducing organizational risk exposure. |
| Approver | Reviews and authorizes requests related to vulnerability and exposure management, including false positive validations, exception deferrals, assignment change approvals, and risk reduction measures. This role ensures governance and compliance by evaluating justification, risk impact, and remediation timelines before granting approval or rejection. Approvers work within a unified approval view, providing timely decisions, maintaining audit trails, and supporting multi-level workflows to keep remediation processes aligned with organizational policies. |
Unified Security Exposure Management benefits
| Benefit | Feature | Users |
|---|---|---|
| Unified workspace: A centralized interface for managing exposures across infrastructure, applications, containers, and configuration compliance. | Security Exposure Management Workspace | Administrators, Vulnerability Analysts, Remediation Owners, and Approvers |
| Cross-exposure visibility: Provides dashboards and scorecards for monitoring risk posture and remediation progress in real time. | Security Exposure Management Workspace Findings view | Vulnerability Analysts |
| Streamlined administration: A single console for configuring workflows, SLAs, notifications, and assignment rules across all exposure types | Administration in Unified Security Exposure Management | Administrators |
| Integration health monitoring: Built-in tools to track and troubleshoot third-party integrations (for example, Qualys, Tenable, Rapid7). | Review Unified Security Exposure Management integrations | Administrators |
| Role-based experience: Tailored views for personas such as administrators, Vulnerability Analysts, Remediation Owners, and Approvers. | Security Exposure Management Workspace | Administrators, Vulnerability Analysts, Remediation Owners, and Approvers |
| AI-powered enhancements: AI generated insights on Findings view dashboards and approval recommendations for approvers. | Now Assist for Vulnerability Response | Security analysts, Governance & Risk teams, Approvers |
What to explore next
To learn more about configuring and using Unified Security Exposure Management, see: