What Is Your Digital Footprint and Why Should You Care?
What is a Digital Footprint?
Your digital footprint is everything about your business that’s visible online, like websites, cloud tools, and data that others can find or use.
A business’s digital footprint includes everything that exists online under its name or domain. This ranges from obvious elements like websites, subdomains, and company accounts to less visible assets such as SaaS tools, cloud services, employee logins, and vendor platforms. Even third-party tools connected to your systems or legacy infrastructure you’ve stopped using can still leave traces online. All of this forms part of what an attacker could potentially see and exploit.
Why does your Digital Footprint Matter?
As cyber threats become more advanced and persistent, understanding and managing your digital footprint is increasingly critical. With more business activity moving online, attackers have a larger surface to explore and exploit. This often starts with publicly visible assets that many companies may not realise exist.
When businesses fail to monitor or secure their digital footprint, the consequences can be costly. From attackers exploiting forgotten subdomains to impersonation scams that erode customer trust, there are many ways an unmanaged footprint can spiral into a serious breach or reputational disaster.
Understanding Active and Passive Digital Footprints
Digital footprints come in two forms: active and passive. Active digital footprints are the assets your business knowingly creates and manages. This may be your company website, your social media pages, the services you use to sign up with your company email and your email domains. These are visible and usually accounted for in your digital strategy.
On the other hand, passive digital footprints are often created without deliberate action. They include things like metadata, old software still linked to your domain, or accounts on third-party platforms that are no longer used or managed. Dormant assets or forgotten domains can pose serious risks if they’re not tracked or secured, as they can provide entry points for attackers.
Attackers often start by targeting what’s already visible to the public, and many businesses are unaware of how much information they may have exposed online in both active and passive assets. This is where Attack Surface Management (ASM) becomes essential. ASM involves identifying, analysing, and managing the digital assets that are accessible over the internet. By understanding what’s visible, businesses can proactively secure their environments and reduce potential entry points for cyberattacks.
What are the Risks of an Unmanaged Digital Footprint?
An unmanaged digital footprint can open your business up to serious security and reputational risks. Here are some common vulnerabilities that are often overlooked:
- Shadow IT and unauthorised cloud apps: Employees may use tools or services without IT approval, creating invisible gaps in your security perimeter.
- Unpatched legacy systems or unused domains: Outdated software and forgotten web domains can serve as easy targets for attackers if left exposed.
- Exposure to phishing, spoofing, or impersonation: Publicly available data can be used to mimic your brand or staff, tricking customers or employees into revealing sensitive information.
- Reputational risk from overlooked public data: Business-related information found online. This could be leaked credentials or old marketing content that could potentially harm your company’s image or be used in social engineering attacks.
Real-World Examples from the Region
One example is the 2020 ransomware attack on Taiwan’s state-run oil company, CPC Corporation. Attackers leveraged publicly exposed remote access ports to gain a foothold in the network, with the likely goal of identity theft. The incident disrupted supply chains and caused service outages, showing how unmanaged digital assets can lead to real-world operational damage.
Cybersecurity advisories from Singapore’s CSA have repeatedly warned businesses about attackers exploiting unsecured internet-facing systems, urging organisations to adopt tools and regularly monitor their digital exposure.
How to Audit Your Digital Footprint
Understanding your digital footprint begins with identifying what’s visible to the outside world. This involves mapping out all your online assets that could potentially be exploited, both active and passive.
Step-by-step process to audit your digital footprint:
- Conduct an attack surface scan. Use tools that passively scan your domain to identify internet-facing assets such as subdomains, open ports, and cloud services.
- Perform DNS lookups. Analyse your domain name records to find all related assets, including mail servers and unused subdomains.
- Engage third-party audits. Bring in external experts to conduct deep-dive assessments such as VAPT, especially useful for uncovering hidden or forgotten services.
- Catalogue all findings. Create and maintain an updated inventory of digital assets including old websites, test environments, and shadow IT.
- Establish continuous monitoring. One-time checks aren’t enough. Continuous visibility helps track new additions, misconfigurations, or changes in exposure over time.
By turning this audit into an ongoing process, your business can gain the ability to detect changes early and react before issues escalate.
Best Practices to Reducing your Cyber Risk
Start with small but impactful actions to reduce your business’s digital exposure:
- Audit your online assets regularly. Review your websites, subdomains, cloud platforms, and third-party tools to ensure they’re accounted for and properly secured.
- Maintain security hygiene. Apply patches promptly, keep SSL certificates current, and decommission any outdated or unused infrastructure.
- Train employees on cyber awareness. Regularly educate staff to identify phishing attempts and avoid accidental exposure of sensitive data.
- Use role-based access controls. Limit access based on job responsibilities and monitor vendor access to reduce risk from third-party platforms.
How MyRepublic can help Safeguard your Systems
You can’t protect what you don’t know.
If you’d like to know how we can help, register today for a free Attack Surface Management Assessment to uncover what’s publicly exposed online under your domain, or get in touch to understand more about our Cybersecurity Services.
