Everything You Need to Know About Vulnerability Management

Enterprise networks are very complex networks. They need several components to work together. Every component can have its own vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities will expose your system and network to security threats. You might be using components like software, hardware, and cloud-based services for doing your work.

It is very difficult to address all these vulnerabilities. Customers don’t have control over these vulnerabilities. It is impossible to protect your system from zero-day exploits and unknown vulnerabilities.

However, it is very important to protect your network from these vulnerabilities. If you are not protecting your network from vulnerabilities, then it will lead to a data breach. According to a report from Varonis, more than 2244 cyber-attacks happen every day.

It is important to find the right security plan for your business. This can help you in protecting your business from a security breach. Vulnerability management is one of the most secure methods as it will help you in detecting vulnerabilities in your system. In this article, we are going to talk about Vulnerability management.

Definition of vulnerability management:

Vulnerability management is a simple process of finding vulnerabilities in your network. You need to classify and prioritize the vulnerabilities that are present in your system.

A data breach can happen due to security gaps. These security gaps exist in your network. Sometimes these security breaches can also happen due to these reasons:

• Weak business process: If you have a weak business process, then your sensitive information can get leaked.
• Inadequate access controls: Sometimes you can provide access to sensitive assets and information.
• Human errors: You should educate your employees about the best security practices. This will ensure that your employees can protect your information and servers.
• Physical issues: Natural disasters and power outages can affect your servers.

Definition of a Vulnerability Management program:

A vulnerability management program is unique for every organization. You should consider the security threats that your organization is facing. Also, the technologies that you are using are going to affect the program. You should also think about the geographic and legal limitations of your area.

Vulnerability management program contains these components:

1. Vulnerability assessment

This is the most important step of this entire program. It will help you in finding the vulnerabilities that are present in your network.

However, vulnerabilities change with time. Thus, you should always look for new vulnerabilities in your system. These bugs can change due to the changing threat landscape. Make sure that you are re-evaluating the vulnerabilities with time. Also, you should check the risks that are associated with the vulnerabilities.

2. Systematic process

You should create a process for conducting vulnerability treatment and assessment. This process will help you in tracking these things:

• Business operations
• Technologies
• Policies
• Efforts in mitigating vulnerability risk

Vulnerability management uses advanced technology for finding vulnerabilities in the network. You should tell about these vulnerabilities to the security team.

3. Blindspot detection

You can’t manage the vulnerabilities that you can’t see. Continuous monitoring is a very important part of vulnerability management. It is very important if you are working in a DevOps environment. In a DevOps environment, the changes are very rapid. Due to this, the infrastructure configurations will get exposed to vulnerability risks. If you are not scanning your new systems, then the vulnerabilities will exist as blind spots. Hackers will generally look for these blind spots in your system. It is very easy to exploit these vulnerabilities.

You can use automated discovery capability for finding security gaps in your system. It will help you in managing the vulnerabilities that are present in your system. These systems will also prompt you to install the security patches. This will ensure that all your systems are protected from attackers.

4. Automation

You should share the information of the vulnerabilities with your IT security team. These IT members will first prioritize the bugs according to your policies. Also, specific preferences within departments and teams can affect this process. For example, some teams might not want to disable services for investigating some vulnerability. However, your service will expose your business to security risks if you are not monitoring it.

Your vulnerability management program should use automation for reducing your workload. It should focus on minimizing the security risks by using advanced tools and technologies. You can’t use the manual approach to deal with vulnerabilities. It is impossible to deal with vulnerabilities manually as enterprise IT environments are complex.

It will take a lot of time to fix a simple vulnerability. Also, it is prone to various human errors. The security solution will automatically download the security patch as soon as possible. The tool will work within the predefined policies that you have defined.

5. Reporting

Vulnerability management solutions will access logs from various network devices. It will also help you in monitoring your IT infrastructure continuously. Thus, your security team might get overwhelmed with the information that is reported by these solutions. They need to make decisions in real-time as vulnerabilities can lead to a data breach. You should ensure that you have access to a good dashboard and reporting mechanism. This is very important for every Vulnerability management solution.

The main problem for the IT team is to get access to the right information. After that, they need to focus on an effective and fast remediation process. This will help you quickly closing the security gap. Thus, you should ensure that your vulnerability management program has a good reporting system. This will help you in taking the right decisions.

Conclusion

These are the main components of the vulnerability management program. Vulnerability management programs are very important for modern businesses. Thus, you should focus on implementing a good vulnerability management program. However, SMBs find it difficult to implement a vulnerability management program as they don’t have access to a good IT team. If you don’t have access to a good IT security team, then you should consider working with an MSSP. Experienced MSSPs like Bleuwire can help you in protecting your business from attackers. They will help you in creating a perfect vulnerability management program for your business. Bleuwire will also help you in finding and fixing vulnerabilities in your network. This will ensure that you don’t need to worry about hiring security professionals for your business. If you need more information regarding IT security services, then you can contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™  services and solutions in how we can help your business.