Magic Quadrant for Exposure Assessment Platforms

How does Gartner define the Exposure Assessment Platforms market in 2025?

Exposure assessment platforms (EAPs) continuously identify and prioritize exposures, such as vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, across a broad range of asset classes. They natively deliver or integrate with discovery capabilities, such as assessment tools, that enumerate exposures, like vulnerabilities and configuration issues, to increase visibility. EAPs use techniques like threat intelligence (TI) to analyze an organization's attack surfaces and weaknesses, and prioritize treatment efforts for high-risk exposures by incorporating threat landscape, business and existing security control context. Through prioritized visualizations and treatment recommendations, EAPs help provide direction for mobilization, identifying the various teams involved in mitigation and remediation. EAPs are primarily delivered as self-hosted software or as a cloud service, and may use agents for exposure information collection.

Key Facts for Magic Quadrant for Exposure Assessment Platforms in 2025

Publication Date: 10 November 2025

Document ID: G00808226

Coverage: Global

Authors: Mitchell Schneider, Dhivya Poole, Jonathan Nunez

Core Purpose: Exposure assessment platforms (EAPs) continuously identify and prioritize exposures, such as vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, across a broad range of asset classes. They natively deliver or integrate with discovery capabilities, use threat intelligence to analyze attack surfaces and weaknesses, and prioritize treatment efforts for high-risk exposures by incorporating threat landscape, business and existing security control context.

How was the Exposure Assessment Platforms market evolved in 2025?

This is the first version of the Magic Quadrant for Exposure Assessment Platforms, replacing the Market Guide for Vulnerability Assessment

EAPs continuously identify and prioritize exposures such as vulnerabilities and misconfigurations across broad asset classes

Platforms use threat intelligence to analyze attack surfaces and prioritize treatment efforts for high-risk exposures

EAPs deliver or integrate with discovery capabilities to enumerate exposures and increase visibility

Results are consolidated into central locations to improve operational efficiency through risk scoring, trends, stats and visualizations

Core purpose is to provide better, consolidated view of high-risk exposures enabling proactive breach prevention

Market is nascent but showing early signs of momentum, fueled by rising volume and complexity of exposures

Adoption most common among large enterprises with mature security operations and strategic focus on CTEM

Vendors increasingly targeting midsize organizations with more accessible, integrated, and automated solutions

Market emerged from vulnerability assessment and adjacent capabilities including VPT, EASM, CAASM, and AEV

What product features are required to be included in this year's evaluation?

Natively deliver or integrate with discovery capabilities to uncover a wide range of assets from internal, external, cloud and end-user attack surfaces; and report on exposures across a variety of asset types. Asset sources include endpoints, network infrastructure, on-premises infrastructure, identity (e.g., entitlements), physical and virtual hosts, containers, Internet of Things (IoT) and operational technology (OT), and cloud platforms and applications.

Prioritize discovered issues based on the accessibility, visibility and exploitability of the exposure. This includes applying asset context, threat intelligence and security control context.

Enable mobilization by integrating into a wider set of IT service management systems, providing enhanced asset context and reporting.

What are the common features of top products in the Exposure Assessment Platforms space?

Extend discovery capabilities to digital assets and those artifacts being actively abused by external threat actors via native or third-party capabilities. Asset sources may include social media, surface/dark/deep web and digital supply chain.

Prioritize exposures through extended analysis of the accessibility and likelihood of exploitation via API flexibility to ingest additional non-native context. This may include the EAP solution performing attack path analysis and/or taking data/output from adversarial exposure validation such as breach and attack simulation (BAS).

Enable faster remediation or mitigation through integration with IT risk management, IT operations, security operations solutions (e.g., security information and event management [SIEM], security orchestration, automation and response [SOAR]) and/or directly with controls (e.g., security posture management or automated security controls assessment solutions).

Track the life cycle of exposures via a centralized, aggregated view supported with automated workflows.

Scope Exclusions

Exposure assessment and prioritization capabilities solely focused only on specialized environments, such as cyber physical systems (CPS) [e.g., Internet of Things (IoT) and operational technology (OT) devices], applications and cloud

Solutions where discovery (via native or integration) capabilities are limited to less than three types of attack surfaces (internal, external, cloud, end user, and digital)

Vendors that were not the original manufacturer of the EAP product. This includes software original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), resellers that repackage products that would qualify from their original provider, carriers, internet, and other service providers that offer managed services, such as managed security services providers (MSSPs) or managed detection and response (MDR) providers

Inclusion Criteria

Vendors must, among other requirements:

Minimum $20 million in annual revenue OR at least 200 paying production customers in two or more geographic regions

Minimum signs of global presence with at least 25 production customers outside home region

24/7 global technical support available on multiple continents

Active participation in the market via selling/marketing to enterprise customers

Active development of new features and capabilities around exposure management

EAP capabilities generally available as of January 1, 2024

Native or integrated discovery capabilities across internal, external, cloud, and end-user attack surfaces covering IT servers, workstations, OT/IoT, applications, identity, and cloud workloads

Ability to prioritize exposures based on accessibility, visibility, exploitability, asset context, threat intelligence, and security control context

Integration with IT service management systems for enhanced asset context and reporting

Secure APIs for full platform access and third-party integrations

Out-of-the-box compliance reporting for multiple roles

Feature in the Customer Interest Indicator (CII) defined by Gartner

Ability to Execute — Relative Weighting

Product or Service - High

Overall Viability - High

Sales Execution/Pricing - Medium

Market Responsiveness/Record - High

Marketing Execution - Low

Customer Experience - High

Operations - Medium

Completeness of Vision — Relative Weighting

Market Understanding - High

Marketing Strategy - Low

Sales Strategy - Medium

Offering (Product) Strategy - High

Business Model - NotRated

Vertical/Industry Strategy - Low

Innovation - High

Geographic Strategy - Medium

FAQs

Q: What does this research cover?

A: This research evaluates 20 vendors in the Exposure Assessment Platforms market based on their ability to continuously discover, analyze, and prioritize exposures across internal, external, cloud, and end-user environments. It assesses vendors' capabilities in asset discovery, exposure enumeration, risk-based prioritization, remediation workflow integration, and compliance reporting. The Magic Quadrant evaluates both technical capabilities and market execution including product features, customer experience, sales strategy, innovation, and geographic presence.

Q: Who should use this research?

A: This research should be used by cybersecurity leaders, security architects, vulnerability management teams, and security operations professionals who need to evaluate exposure assessment platform vendors. It helps organizations understand vendor capabilities for discovering and prioritizing vulnerabilities and misconfigurations across their attack surface. Security teams can use this research to assess which vendors best align with their continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) programs, organizational maturity, deployment requirements, and integration needs with existing security tools and workflows.

Q: What are the mandatory features of vendors included in this market?

A: Vendors must provide dedicated EAP capabilities that natively deliver or integrate with discovery capabilities to uncover assets across internal, external, cloud, and end-user attack surfaces, including endpoints, network infrastructure, on-premises infrastructure, identity, physical and virtual hosts, containers, IoT/OT, and cloud platforms. They must prioritize exposures based on accessibility, visibility, and exploitability using asset context, threat intelligence, and security control context. Additionally, vendors must enable mobilization by integrating with IT service management systems, providing enhanced asset context and reporting capabilities.

Q: What are some reasons for not being included in this report?

Exposure assessment capabilities focused solely on specialized environments (CPS, IoT, OT, applications, or cloud only)
Discovery capabilities limited to fewer than three types of attack surfaces
Vendors that are not the original manufacturer (OEMs, resellers, MSSPs, MDR providers)
Failed to meet minimum revenue ($20M annually) or customer count (200 production customers in 2+ regions) thresholds
Lack of global presence (fewer than 25 customers outside home region)
No 24/7 global technical support on multiple continents
EAP capabilities not generally available by January 1, 2024
Did not feature in Gartner's Customer Interest Indicator (CII)

Q: What differentiates Ability to Execute vs. Completeness of Vision?

A: Ability to Execute evaluates a vendor's current performance and operational capabilities, including product quality, sales success, customer experience, market responsiveness, and organizational stability. It focuses on present-day execution and delivery. Completeness of Vision assesses a vendor's strategic direction and future planning, including market understanding, innovation, product strategy, and long-term positioning. It emphasizes forward-looking capabilities and the vendor's ability to anticipate and shape market evolution.

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