Security teams are usually confident in the coverage of their external attack surface. What causes problems is not what they are scanning, but what they are not aware of. Modern web estates are no longer static. Domains appear and disappear, cloud services are spun up, test environments are exposed, suppliers introduce new integrations, and legacy assets quietly resurface. In that environment, a one-off inventory or occasional discovery scan quickly becomes outdated.

That is why asset discovery can no longer be treated as a point-in-time exercise.

With the latest updates to Asset Discovery, AppCheck provides a continuous visibility layer that feeds everything else: scanning coverage, prioritisation, and response. Without it, even mature vulnerability programmes are working from an incomplete picture.

Why asset discovery has become the weak link
Web applications have always relied on external services to function. What has changed is scale. Cloud adoption, SaaS platforms, and infrastructure consolidation mean a single application may now depend on dozens or even hundreds of third-party services. Many of these run directly inside users’ browsers or live production environments, creating trust relationships that are rarely visible to security teams.

Attackers understand this shift. They are not focused on the assets you already know about and monitor closely. They look for the ones that are forgotten, misclassified, or newly exposed.

Traditional discovery approaches struggle here. They capture a snapshot, generate a list, and move on. But the moment that scan finishes, the environment starts to change again.

Asset Discovery as a continuous visibility layer
Asset Discovery in AppCheck is designed to close this gap by continuously identifying and tracking your external web estate.
Rather than providing a static inventory, it maintains an up-to-date view of domains, subdomains, and internet-facing services as they evolve. When new assets appear or existing ones change, that visibility is captured automatically.

This turns asset discovery from a periodic task into an always-on capability. If an asset exists, it can be scanned. If it changes, the impact can be assessed. If risk increases, teams can respond with context rather than assumptions.

What’s new in Asset Discovery
Recent updates focus on making discovery more actionable and easier to operationalise.
Security teams can now maintain a continuously refreshed view of their external estate, detect newly exposed assets earlier, and track how environments change over time rather than relying on manual inventories that quickly drift out of date.

Crucially, this visibility is designed to support timely alerts and informed action as risk emerges, not just passive reporting after the fact.
The result is fewer blind spots and greater confidence that scanning coverage reflects what is actually exposed.

Why this matters in practice
In real environments, the gap between perceived and actual coverage is wider than most organisations expect.
Across AppCheck customers using Asset Discovery, over 80% identified internet-facing assets that were not covered by their existing scans. In other words, four out of five organisations believed they had full visibility, but didn’t.

Those assets were not hidden or malicious. They were simply unknown. And until they were discovered, they could not be scanned, monitored, or secured. As one AppCheck customer put it:

“The surprise wasn’t how many vulnerabilities we had. It was how many assets weren’t being scanned at all. Asset Discovery completely changed our understanding of what our attack surface actually looked like.”
— Head of Application Security

This is where continuous discovery changes the conversation. Security teams move from reacting to surprises to understanding exposure as it emerges.

How Asset Discovery fits with AppCheck
AppCheck already helps organisations identify vulnerabilities across external applications, APIs, and infrastructure. Asset Discovery ensures those capabilities are applied to the right assets at the right time. It provides the visibility layer that informs scanning, prioritisation, and response across the platform.

In practice, it ensures AppCheck is always working from a complete and current picture of the external attack surface, not an outdated assumption.

Frequently asked questions

Is Asset Discovery a one-off scan?
No. It runs continuously alongside scanning to identify new and changing assets over time.

Does this replace existing asset inventories?
It complements them by showing what is actually exposed externally, not just what is documented internally?

What types of assets are covered?

Internet-facing domains, subdomains, and services connected to your web estate.

How quickly are new assets identified?
Newly exposed assets are surfaced within 7 days of their appearing, helping teams respond earlier.

See Asset Discovery in action
Asset Discovery is the foundation that allows everything else to work properly.

If you want confidence that your scanning reflects the real attack surface and keeps pace with change, it starts here.

See Asset Discovery in action.