Applies To: WatchGuard Cloud
This feature is available only to participants in the WatchGuard Cloud Beta program.
The exposure level on the Application Risk dashboard indicates the relative security risk associated with an application. WatchGuard Cloud assigns each application an exposure score, then maps the score to an exposure level:
- Minimal
- Low
- Moderate
- High
- Severe
A higher exposure level indicates greater potential risk if the application is abused or compromised. Applications with elevated privilege, network reachability, and abuse potential, such as many remote access tools, are more likely to receive a Severe exposure level.
WatchGuard Cloud calculates the exposure score as a weighted average of these application risk areas:
- Privilege and control surface — The ability of the application to act on the system, such as file transfer, command execution, remote sessions, or privileged control.
- Exposure and reachability — How reachable the application is, from local-only operation to Internet-facing or broadly reachable endpoints.
- Data sensitivity — The sensitivity of data the application handles, from public data to credentials, secrets, or highly sensitive records.
- Delivery model — How the application is delivered and where data and execution reside, such as local install, client-server, cloud-hosted, or cross-tenant platforms.
- Abuse potential — How useful the application is to an attacker as part of a security-relevant attack chain.
- Morphology — The application design and behavior profile, from passive utility tools to remote control, tunneling, or script execution tools.
- AI and automation capability — Whether the application can suggest, generate, automate, or act autonomously through artificial intelligence (AI) or integrations.
Exposure Level Description
In the Application Details panel, WatchGuard Cloud shows an exposure-level description for the selected application. To open the Applications Details panel, select an application in the bubble cluster chart or from the applications list.
The exposure-level description is specific to the risk factors for the selected application. WatchGuard Cloud builds the description from the application risk areas that contribute most to the exposure score for that application.
