Introduction
Vulnerability management is an essential component of any company’s cybersecurity strategy. It encapsulates security practices that proactively identify, prevent, mitigate, and classify all the vulnerabilities found within a corporation’s IT system.
And considering the fast pace at which technology advances, it is only natural for vulnerabilities to be evolving similarly. Threat actors are developing new ways of taking advantage of old and new vulnerabilities at a rate that makes it hard for cybersecurity professionals to keep up.
Understanding Vulnerabilities and Vulnerability Management
What Is A Vulnerability?
A vulnerability is a hole in computer security, that leaves the system open to damages caused by cyber attackers. Vulnerabilities may also refer to any type of weakness in a computer system itself, in a set of procedures, or in anything that leaves information exposed to a threat. These must be solved immediately to stop cybercriminals from exploiting vulnerabilities.
Most Common Types of Vulnerabilities
There are many types of vulnerabilities. The most common types exploited by threat actors are:
Zero-day vulnerabilities are security flaws that have been discovered by threat actors but are unknown to enterprises and software vendors. The term “Zero-Day” refers to a software vulnerability that the vendor was not aware of and for which they had “0” days to develop a security patch or update to address the problem, even though the attacker was aware of it.
Because they are tough to identify, Zero-Day attacks are particularly dangerous for companies. To detect and mitigate Zero-Day vulnerabilities effectively, a well-coordinated defense is needed, one that includes both prevention technology and an appropriate response plan.
The biggest threat to cloud and app security is misconfiguration. This method can be prone to errors and take a lot of time to administer and update because many application security technologies need manual configuration.
Misconfigured S3 buckets were exploited as the entry point in recent years for many breaches that were publicly revealed. These mistakes turn cloud workloads into transparent targets that a basic web crawler can quickly find. The danger associated with misconfigurations is further increased by the lack of perimeter protection in the cloud.
Application programming interfaces, or APIs for short, provide a digital interface that enables applications or components of applications to communicate with each other either over the internet or via a private network.
Being one of the few organizational assets with a public IP address, APIs can easily become targets for attackers to breach if not secured properly.
Securing APIs is a process prone to human error.
Unpatched or outdated software makes an easy target for cybercriminals, and it can have devastating effects. Software vendors release periodic updates to either add new features and functionalities or patch found vulnerabilities. And similar to misconfigurations, threat actors are on the lookout for such vulnerabilities to exploit.
What Is Vulnerability Management?
Vulnerability management is the cyclical process of identifying, classifying, remediating, and mitigating vulnerabilities.
The goal of vulnerability management is to reduce the organization’s overall exposure to risks by mitigating as many vulnerabilities as possible. But given the immense number of vulnerabilities currently exposed in the wild, and the speed at which new vulnerabilities are discovered, the vulnerability management process must be continuous to keep up with the new and emerging threats, as well as the changing environments.
Some other objectives for vulnerability management include:
- Identification of software faults affective the environment’s security;
- Compliance with audits and industry regulations;
- Mitigating newly identified security threats;
- Manage effectively security risks.
The Vulnerability Management Lifecycle
The vulnerability management lifecycle is an ongoing, cyclical cybersecurity procedure for locating, evaluating, prioritizing, and addressing vulnerabilities to improve an organization’s security.
The vulnerability management lifecycle may be broken down into five parts, each of which plays a distinct function in locating, avoiding, minimizing, and categorizing vulnerabilities that may be present in your IT system.
The assessment step is the first phase of the vulnerability management lifecycle. Cybersecurity professionals specify and condense the assets that will be examined for vulnerabilities at this stage. The assessment process then moves on to the evaluation of each asset for vulnerabilities and the production of a report to pinpoint those that require patching, more investigation, or remediation. Utilizing an “agent,” which entails placing a sensor on each asset to discover vulnerabilities, or a network-based solution, which necessitates connecting all endpoints to the same network, are the two most frequently used techniques for performing a vulnerability assessment.
Prioritization starts after finding and evaluating the system’s vulnerabilities. This stage requires the completion of three sub-steps. First, a value based on the significance of the discovered vulnerabilities needs to be assigned. Now that the vulnerabilities have been prioritized in order of priority, it is time to determine the risk of each asset being exposed. You can order the remediation of the assets from the most exposed to the least exposed based on the level of exposure.
You have now identified the vulnerabilities and ranked them according to the degree of exposure they cause to the assets they affect. Now that the first stages have been completed, it is time to begin the process of resolving the vulnerabilities. Depending on how exposed they are, vulnerabilities can be fixed in more ways, mainly remediation (the complete removal of the vulnerability from the system), and mitigation (a solution meant to temporarily minimize the effects of the vulnerability, until remediation is possible).
After addressing the vulnerabilities and implementing the appropriate fixes based on the amount of threat they pose; a reassessment is required. You will learn through the reassessment process whether the steps you took to eliminate the vulnerability were successful.
The vulnerability management lifecycle ends with this stage. There can still be problems after you’ve completed the preceding stages. As a result, by periodically reviewing the lifecycle, you can identify methods to enhance and fortify the security of your systems, preventing threat actors from interfering with your business.
Vulnerability Management vs. Patch Management
Patch management and vulnerability management provide a secure, efficient, and up-to-date IT system. The two terms are frequently used interchangeably, and that’s incorrect since they’re two different processes
Patch management is the operational process of applying fixes (patches) for vulnerable systems, which is the key distinction between patch management and vulnerability management. Identification, scanning, and prioritization of vulnerabilities for remedy constitute the process of vulnerability management.
To gain a firmer understanding of these differences:
- Vulnerability Management: This is a management process designed to identify, classify, remediate, and mitigate vulnerabilities proactively in an IT infrastructure, its goal being to reduce overall risk to an organization.
- Patch Management: This is the management of taking measures to fix software flaws. This often entails following a patch management policy and operational process that specifies what to patch, when to patch it, and at what priority levels.
As you can see, vulnerability management is possible without patch management, but patch management is not possible without vulnerability management.
Vulnerability Management vs. Vulnerability Assessment
Another misconception commonly made is that vulnerability management and vulnerability assessment are again, interchangeable, but they are not.
Vulnerability assessments are one-time tasks with clearly established beginning and ending dates. Your IT environment will often be examined by an outside information security professional to find any weaknesses that potential cybercriminals could exploit.
These vulnerabilities will be thoroughly documented in a report by the information security consultant, who will also make suggestions for how to fix them. The vulnerability assessment is completed once the report has been written by the information security consultant.
A vulnerability assessment is an essential component of vulnerability management that enables businesses to safeguard their computer systems and data from hacker attacks and unauthorized access. The goal of vulnerability management is to manage a company’s cybersecurity vulnerabilities over the long term, in contrast to vulnerability assessments, which have a set beginning and ending date.
It’s crucial that you find and fix cybersecurity flaws before they may be used to access your IT systems and applications and give hackers access. Your company may increase the security of its IT infrastructure with a thorough vulnerability assessment and a continuous vulnerability management program.
The Importance of Vulnerability Management for Organizations
Ecosystems can be flooded with weaknesses. The vulnerability management process helps with identifying and fixing potential security issues before they become serious concerns for your environment. Vulnerability management may protect a company’s brand and bottom line by preventing data breaches and other security problems.
Vulnerability management can also increase adherence to security norms and rules. Finally, it can assist businesses in better understanding their overall security risk posture and potential areas for development.
Where Do Organizations Struggle With Vulnerability Management?
Due to the sheer number of emerging companies struggle with implementing an up-to-date and strong vulnerability management program.
When it comes to challenges, these are the most common:
Many businesses have poor insight into their inventory and assets. You consult your asset inventory after a new vulnerability is found to ascertain how many assets are in danger and how many can be patched without risk.
But this task is impossible without a complete profile of each asset. This is why currently shadow IT assets represent the biggest challenge with vulnerability management that companies face.
You cannot defend what you cannot see, thus to have any hope of securing your network, you must have comprehensive sight over it.
Every day, thousands of new vulnerabilities are created, posing a variety of issues for security teams.
Because of their sheer number and complexity, new vulnerabilities must be prioritized according to the threats they pose to your company’s assets as they emerge.
As the severity of some vulnerabilities can frequently be deceiving, priority needs to be given to the risks that are most damaging to an organization’s most valuable assets. This is where experience and knowledge of the entire risk are crucial.
Your security is often compromised since asset ownership is frequently based on dated spreadsheets or imprecise data from many sources.
There must be an owner for every asset or asset group, and this owner is responsible for maintaining records, updating information, and alerting the proper parties to threats and vulnerabilities.
Because multiple systems are integrated throughout an organization’s network if one system fails, it frequently has a domino effect.
Many organizations now rank vulnerabilities according to the importance of their assets. But frequently, this produces too much data for remediation teams to respond wisely. This may result in the discovery of possibly millions of serious vulnerabilities in bigger organizations.
How, then, can the crucial vulnerabilities be given top priority? To truly understand the actual danger in your environment, more knowledge and context are required.
When prioritizing threats, organizations may consider additional variables including the value or exploitability of an asset, the relationship between a vulnerability and the accessibility of publicly available exploits, and others.
Overcoming Struggles: How to Build an Effective Vulnerability Management Plan?
An effective, well-implemented vulnerability management program will help you increase the overall security of your company. When designing it, keep in mind to scale it based on the size, requirements, and complexity of your company’s systems.
Vulnerability management puts together the following activities:
- Identifying and tracking assets;
- Categorizing the assets into groups;
- Scanning the assets for vulnerabilities;
- Ranking and prioritizing risks;
- Patch Management (including testing and applying the patches);
- Follow-up scans.
It is challenging to effectively handle the inherent environmental risk without a current asset inventory. The vulnerability assessment tool searches for assets in the designated network subnets in this step. Systems found during the scan are added to the inventory of assets.
This procedure aids in making certain that all systems are recognized and patched appropriately.
The asset inventory is used to create asset categories or groups. Instead of using subnets, asset groups are used to scan certain assets. These categories also help in assigning risk rankings, addressing asset or business requirements, and customizing vulnerability scans.
Vulnerability scanning has two components: a scan and a report. The purpose of the vulnerability scan is to examine and test systems and services for known vulnerabilities. The scan includes a list of assets and scan choices, including ports, protocols, and network packet behavioral characteristics. The report includes a prioritized list of vulnerabilities, an explanation of each vulnerability, a risk estimate, and remedial procedures.
The next step is to classify and rank the vulnerabilities you’ve found in your network after you’ve finished identifying them. You can achieve this in several different ways:
Prioritization via CVSS scores
The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (commonly known as CVSS Scores) assigns a numerical value (0–10) to each vulnerability’s severity.
Infosec teams typically use CVSS scores as a point of comparison between vulnerabilities and to prioritize the fixing of vulnerabilities as part of a vulnerability management program.
One drawback of the CVSS metrics, though, is that it only considers the risk that a vulnerability poses to your environment when determining its severity.
Prioritization via CISA KEV database
The experts from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have developed a living catalog containing known exploited vulnerabilities that carry significant risk for both governmental institutions and businesses after observing that attackers do not only rely on vulnerabilities deemed to be critical.
All organizations should focus their remediation efforts on the subset of vulnerabilities that are already compromising their operations, according to the KEV catalog, which is widely used.
Prioritization based on business context
Every organization has a unique set of priorities, objectives, and levels of risk tolerance. Therefore, the prioritization strategy that considers the needs and goals of your company is probably the best to consider.
The CVSS and KEV should still be used, but if you filter them based on your present environment, you can prioritize vulnerabilities more effectively.
Addressing the vulnerabilities based on risk factors and the business environment is critical after the evaluation and prioritization step. You can select either of the following two alternatives based on the vulnerability:
- Remediation: A vulnerability can be remedied by applying patches, shutting down open ports, or invoking a specific process exception. Most organizations address the problems after they have prioritized the risks and comprehended the vulnerabilities. This is typically the ideal option whenever it is feasible;
- Mitigation: Organisations can choose to temporarily mitigate a vulnerability by lowering the chance that it will be exploited if a vulnerability cannot be fully remedied right away.
Follow the development of the vulnerabilities you have remedied or minimized. If organizations wish to control the risk that vulnerabilities offer, they must increase the effectiveness and accuracy with which they identify and resolve vulnerabilities. As a result, many businesses routinely evaluate the effectiveness of their vulnerability management program.
F.A.Q.
Vulnerability management is responsible for identifying, classifying, mediating, and remediating vulnerabilities across a system.
The process is made up of 5 steps: assessment, prioritization, action, reassessment, and improvement.
CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) is a system that provides a method for publicly sharing information on cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exposures.
Patch management is the operational process of applying fixes (patches) for vulnerable systems, which is the key distinction between patch management and vulnerability management. Identification, scanning, and prioritization of vulnerabilities for remedy constitute the process of vulnerability management.
Vulnerability assessments are one-time tasks with clearly established beginning and ending dates. It’s an essential component, part of the vulnerability management process, that enables businesses to safeguard their computer systems and data from hacker attacks and unauthorized access.
Vulnerability management looks for security flaws within an organization, while risk management takes a comprehensive approach to how the company is running.
