As corporate and public sector companies continue to become more digital, there are an increasing number of security risks. It is difficult for any security team to promptly fix every one of those vulnerabilities without a major increase in resources. Chief information security officers (CISOs) must therefore order vulnerabilities according to priority. Up until now, it has been difficult to achieve that prioritization. Since there is no connection between vulnerability management and threat management, security teams have not had a clear, comprehensive means to understand how attackers can leverage existing vulnerabilities to promote their strategic aims.
Although each security flaw is significant, they are not all of equal significance. In a world with flaws, the best course of action for CISOs is to concentrate on protecting the company’s high-value assets against known threats that are most likely to inflict the greatest harm.
What is Vulnerability Management?
Vulnerability management is the “cycled process of discovering, categorizing, prioritizing, resolving, and mitigating” software vulnerabilities. It is important to note that vulnerability management and vulnerability assessment are two different processes.
The fact that vulnerability management is an ongoing procedure used to continuously uncover flaws that may be fixed by applying patches and configuring security settings is its most crucial feature.
With this understanding of Vulnerability Management, one must also have some knowledge about Vulnerability which is defined as the potential weakness that can be exploited by the hackers. Few of the vulnerabilities are –
- Insecure system attacks – This occurs when a configuration is just incorrect, either from the beginning or after changes were made that jeopardize the application’s or system’s security.
- Malware – Trojan horses, spyware, keyloggers, ransomware, and computer infections would all be compromised as a result.
- Proxy Attacks – An attacker will set up a proxy server to send the user’s network traffic through. When the victim and a remote website are communicating back and forth, the attacker can collect sensitive information from the flow.
Setting Prioritization for Vulnerability Management
One needs to find a way to communicate not only what is being done but also the opportunities and threats that the business faces by doing so in order to engage senior management with the progress that is being made in vulnerability management. The procedure helps to increase the board’s understanding of the importance of efficient vulnerability management.
Below are few points to be kept while prioritizing
- Streamline Risk Management: CISOs can dramatically decrease the risks associated with cyberattacks by integrating vulnerability and threat management, leveraging vulnerability reports that go beyond technical facts to highlight the higher-level intentions and techniques of malicious actors.
- Improves testing strategy: Organizations prioritize their security testing according to the attack techniques that are the greatest risk for their businesses.
- Save personnel time: Prioritization helps save time by enabling CISOs to quickly understand how a vulnerability can impact their organization.
CISO’s Challenges
One of the major difficulties CISOs encounter is expressing how difficult it is to keep up with changes in contemporary privacy and cybersecurity as well as the always changing vulnerabilities.
Some major organizations may find it difficult to keep up with how sophisticated and technologically advanced cybercriminals are getting. Every year, thousands of vulnerabilities will be presented to the typical organization. It’s crucial to identify the threats to your organization that can cause broad harm, and it’s even more crucial to be ready for them.
A more strategic and business-oriented CISO role has emerged over time. This includes crucial duties like developing a security strategy that complements the overall business strategy, ensuring that information security policies are updated regularly, creating employee education and awareness programmes, building a strong information security risk management framework, and planning ongoing reviews and assessments to ensure they can effectively address any gaps the business may have across information security, IT risk, and other areas.
CISO’s Guide for better vulnerability
CISO’s must understand that it’s not about gaining the attention of the leadership through reporting of breaches in the industry but rather by providing measurable metrics that guide them in prioritization and mitigation steps for their own organization.
Vulnerabilities can’t be fixed upon a first come first serve basis! Each vulnerability is a battle in itself, battles with variable impacts. It is of utmost importance that before combatting, impact is measured.
The vulnerability prioritization score computes the impact based upon 8 comprehensive parameters such as Business Sensitivity, Asset Exposure, etc. With vulnerability prioritization scoring, the analyst gets clarity on which vulnerabilities are to be fixed first which increases people, process, and technology efficiency by manifolds.
While the detection and patching of vulnerabilities is an on-going process, executives need detailed insights into their security posture and changes that are taking place.
- Unparalleled visibility from prioritization score
- Scanner ROI evaluation
- Timeline and risk score aid priorities of patching teams
- Risk-posing vulnerability highlights
Metrics of Vulnerability Management Reporting
These are the biggest roadblocks that deter organizations from performing vulnerability management effectively:
Lack of clear visibility over security posture:
CXOs and product owners lack clear visibility into the security posture of their organizations. According to a survey conducted by Insight Enterprises and IDG Research Services5, nearly 80% of senior IT and security leaders lack confidence in their organization’s cybersecurity
posture. Limited visibility of the overall attack surface, and the burden of being overwhelmed with far too many alerts add up to the problem.
Use of numerous vulnerability scanners:
Security engineers often struggle to protect digital assets as they use numerous vulnerability scanners to bring to light security gaps in their systems, networks and applications. While using multiple scanners increase threat monitoring volume, it is challenging to collect and prioritize alerts from multiple scanners.
Copious vulnerability reports:
Security professionals are surrounded by multiple vulnerability reports resulting in inefficient use of operational time. Security teams aren’t able to prioritize threats and often don’t know what to fix first.
Patching with Strobes
The pressure on CISOs to develop highly effective security programmes is growing as firms strive tirelessly to defend their organizations from cybersecurity breaches. They need to handle digital hazards while also taking into account people, process, and technology, therefore they need to be prepared twice as much. The cybersecurity posture of the company should not be compromised by reviewing and changing existing initiatives to make them digital business enablers. Additionally, it’s crucial to make sure that existing personnel procedures inside the firm are updated to handle cybersecurity issues.
For all security-related stakeholders, Strobes is a one-stop shop that makes sure the company is well-protected against technological problems and security risks. Whether it be a web application, mobile app, API, cloud instance, host, or network component, Strobes supports your investments by serving as a solution that ensures thorough risk mitigation.
Strobes assists you in controlling vulnerabilities, minimizing cyber threats, and coordinating them with business goals to help manage corporate risk, whether you’re just beginning the risk management process or seeking to increase your compliance. By supplying the authorities with the real-time results of the analytic module on one screen for the full dashboard, Strobes helps them make smarter decisions.
You can grant access to information to every employee using our role-based authorization tools, allowing them to carry out your risk-based corporate goals. You can make sure that your business culture is upheld and your management environment is strengthened by providing your staff with the necessary knowledge.
Strobes pentesting platform helps you meet compliance and security needs much faster – Schedule a Demo
