Understanding Risk Scores

The Attack Surface Management service provides two types of risk scores. 

Asset Risk Score—a risk score for every asset in the organization calculated based on the asset characteristics and their engagement with malicious activities. An Asset Risk Score is provided on the ASM report details page. See Viewing Attack Surface Management Report Details for details.

Attack Surface Grade—a risk grade for organization assets, which is calculated based on the average attack risk score of all organization assets. An Attack Surface Grade is displayed in a widget on the Attack Surface Management page and ASM report details page. See Accessing Attack Surface Management History and Viewing Attack Surface Management Report Details for details.

Asset Risk Score

Attack Surface Grade

Asset Risk Score

An Asset Risk Score is a calculated number (score) assigned to every asset in the organization. It is calculated based on the asset characteristics (open ports, expired certificates, CVEs, EOL software, and so on.) and their engagement in malicious activities. An Asset Risk Score is available on the ASM report details page. See Viewing Attack Surface Management Report Details for details.

Below is the table displaying the distribution of points between asset characteristics.

Asset Characteristic Points/Item Example
CVEs 0 20 CVEs = 0 points
CVEs with Documented Exploits 3 3 exploitable CVEs = 9 points
Exploited CVEs 5 2 exploted CVEs = 10 points
Possible Remote Code Execution (RCE) 5 5 possible RCEs = 25 points
Critical CVEs 4 6 critical CVEs = 24 points
High-risk CVEs 3 3 high-risk CVEs = 9 points
Medium-risk CVEs 2 5 medium-risk CVEs = 10 points
Low-risk CVEs 1 7 low-risk CVEs = 7 points
End-of-life Software 3 2 EOL software = 6 points
Expired Certificates 1 2 expired certificates = 2 points
Self-signed Certificates 1 2 self-signed certificates = 2 points
Uncommon Ports 3 3 open uncommon ports = 9 points
Risky Services 5 2 risky services open to the Internet = 10 points
Notes: 
  • All ports except 443 and 80 are considered uncommon.

  • The following services are considered risky: ftps, ssh, telnet, ftp, ftpes, rdp, VNC, TEAM_VIEWER, PC_ANYWHERE, MYSQL, MSSQL, ORACLE, POSTGRES, MEMCACHED, ELASTICSEARCH, REDIS, MONGODB, RETHINKDB, UNKNOWN.

An Asset Risk Score is the total of all points for an asset. The minimum possible score is 0 and the maximum score is 100. The lower the score, the lower the risk of attacks on the asset. If the total score is greater than 100, it is rounded to 100 in the ASM report.

Attack Surface Grade

An Attack Surface Grade reflects the overall grade for all organization assets. The Attack Surface Grade is based on the average risk score of all assets of the organization. The average score does not include the assets whose Asset Risk Score is equal to 0.

For the Attack Surface Grade, the scores are distributed the following way:

Grade Score
A+ 93.33 - 100
A 86.67 - 93.33
A- 80 - 86.67
B+ 73.33 - 80
B 66.67 - 73.33
B- 60 - 66.67
C+ 53.33 - 60
C 46.67 - 53.33
C- 40 - 46.67
D+ 33.33 - 40
D 26.67 - 33.33
D- 20 - 26.67
F 0 - 20

The lower the grade, the higher the risk of attacks on organization assets.