Why Exposure Management Is The Cyber Fix We Desperately Need

TECHx

12-05-2025

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Walid Natour, Senior Manager of Security Engineering at Tenable, underscores the importance of proactive cybersecurity through Tenable One Exposure Management Platform. Speaking to TECHx at GISEC , he highlights how exposure management is helping organizations gain complete visibility across their attack surface, prioritize threats, and secure both IT and OT environments before attackers can strike.
TECHx: To start with, could you please introduce yourself and your role at Tenable?
I lead the pre-sales team for the region at Tenable. I've been with Tenable for nearly eight years, and during this time, we've been helping customers across the region understand their cybersecurity challenges. We have a dedicated team covering multiple countries, working to strengthen cyber resilience.
TECHx: What is Tenable's focus this year at GISEC? What new technologies or solutions are you showcasing?
GISEC is a flagship event for us, and we're always excited to be here. It's a great platform to reconnect with our partners and customers. This year, our key focus is Tenable One Exposure Management Platform a proactive approach to cybersecurity that enables organizations to identify threats across their entire attack surface. It helps uncover misconfigurations, identity issues, and vulnerabilities, then guides customers on how to remediate and improve their security posture. We're also highlighting our capabilities in cloud security and how we consolidate everything into a unified platform.
TECHx: In your view, what are the most critical threats organizations are currently facing? How is Tenable helping address them?
One of the main challenges is visibility. With digital transformation and hybrid infrastructure, organizations are adopting diverse technologies, often without a comprehensive view of their entire asset inventory whether on-premises or in the cloud. The attack surface is expanding, giving cyber attackers more entry points. Tenable helps organizations achieve comprehensive visibility, enrich it with business context, and identify how to prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities effectively.
TECHx: AI is a hot topic at GISEC, with nearly every vendor showcasing AI-driven solutions. How is Tenable leveraging AI in cybersecurity?
Tenable has been integrating AI and machine learning into our solutions since 2019, starting with our Vulnerability Priority Rating (VPR), which helps organizations prioritize remediation based on risk. Since then, we've advanced our AI capabilities to include asset criticality prediction, vulnerability predictions, and data normalization. Through our data lake, we connect weaknesses across assets, whether they're related to identity, misconfigurations, or vulnerabilities, and highlight the weakest attack paths. This empowers organizations to take smarter, proactive action to protect their environments.
TECHx: Looking ahead to 2025, what cyber threats should organizations be most prepared for?
We're still seeing ransomware and phishing as common attack vectors. However, threats targeting critical infrastructure, Operational Technology (OT), and cloud environments are on the rise. Organizations need to shift from a purely reactive approach to a preventive strategy. At Tenable, we focus on proactive exposure management helping customers identify and address weaknesses before attackers exploit them.
TECHx: Can you explain the growing importance of OT security?
OT has been around for a long time, but it was traditionally isolated from IT and designed for specific operational tasks not security. Today, with the convergence of IT and OT, these environments are interconnected. A weakness in OT can lead to lateral movement into the broader network, affecting IT and critical business systems. This convergence is why CISOs are now responsible for both IT and OT security, and there's a clear need for unified tools and strategies to manage both effectively.
TECHx: How important are events like GISEC for your business, and what value do they bring to the industry?
GISEC is an essential platform for the cybersecurity community. It brings together stakeholders from various sectors and disciplines to exchange ideas, discuss challenges, and explore new technologies. For Tenable, it's an opportunity to showcase innovations, strengthen relationships with partners, and engage directly with customers to understand evolving needs.
TECHx: Since you mentioned partners what is Tenable's strategy for working with partners in this region?
Tenable is a 100% channel organization, meaning we transact exclusively through partners. We work closely with our channel ecosystem to ensure they're equipped with the right tools, training, and support to effectively serve customers. Our partners play a crucial role in delivering value, and we maintain a strong alignment across sales, technology, and service delivery.