Vulnerability management is a vital component of protecting systems and applications across all business sectors. However, to be effective in an ever-changing threat landscape and to protect your business, it must apply context to the process of remediating vulnerabilities. You must target your primary system and application vulnerabilities before the hackers target you!
Vulnerability scanning tools can deliver actionable data to improve your security posture. However, you need to apply context to realize successful targeted results to your vulnerability remediation program fully. To understand the context of these systems, you need to understand the business value of those systems and the value chain it provides for your organization. Remediating vulnerabilities in context enable you to harden systems systematically and logically. As a result, you are reducing the attack surface on those systems that matter to your business. This is opposed to blindly following the advice from a tool that doesn't understand which assets matter most to you.
Vulnerability management is the process of finding, classifying, remediating and mitigating vulnerabilities before an attack. This process includes software and hardware vulnerability testing to identify the types of vulnerabilities a product might have. It also involves using manual and automated techniques to detect security problems in an enterprise's applications and operating systems before attackers exploit them. Hunting for vulnerabilities can include penetration testing on a simulated network or performing vulnerability scanning on a real one to understand how cyber-criminals may exploit your system. When it comes to defending your business, there's no time to relax regarding network monitoring. It's vitally important to remain fully up to date with any new systems added to your networks and if there are any changes made over time that have the potential to introduce new vulnerabilities.
What Are the Steps in a Vulnerability Management Plan?
You need to know what systems you have on your network and what network zone they reside in, e.g., internal network or demilitarized zone (DMZ). A complete inventory is required of servers, the operating system type (OS) and all the applications installed on those servers and applications on your desktops. Multiple inventory sources are available to administrators of an enterprise, and creating an inventory of your technology assets is a fundamental first step in protecting networks from cyber-attacks.
How do You Prioritize Vulnerabilities in Your Organization?
Once you have a good inventory of your systems, you can begin to apply context to your vulnerability remediation process. The mission-critical systems generally fall into one or more of the following categories: high priority, e.g., customer-facing payment systems or eCommerce webservers. Some businesses may use Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 systems; this categorization process will be sector dependent. The next step is to critically look at ALL assets on your network and prioritize remediation based on business needs. It's about providing the right level of security for each system, rather than the same level of protection for all systems. Once you have your inventory compiled and your categorizations and prioritizations in place, you can use this information to apply some intelligence to your remediations. Vulnerability scanners have a functionality built-in called tagging. This allows you to mark assets on your network and prioritize your efforts.
What Are the Steps in a Vulnerability Management Plan?
With your up-to-date asset management or golden source of systems in place, you are now in an excellent position to apply context and make use of tagging. You should follow the following four steps using the Tier 1, 2 and 3 terminologies combined with network zoning.
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Identify Vulnerabilities
The first step is to identify potential vulnerabilities and how these vulnerabilities will affect your business.
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Evaluating Vulnerabilities
After you identify all vulnerabilities, you can determine the severity of threats. This evaluation helps you decide where to prioritize your security efforts to help reduce your risks faster through the lens of intelligent context.
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Remediating Vulnerabilities
Applying the context of tiering and zoning intelligence, you can start remediating the most severe vulnerabilities on those assets first. Addressing these areas in a timely fashion will reduce the chances of an attack as you secure the rest of your system.
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Reporting Vulnerabilities
Reporting vulnerabilities after you've fixed them can seem unnecessary, but it can help you improve your security and response in the future.
Conclusion
Once you have an inventory of your IT assets, you can apply context to the vulnerability remediation process. You can identify which vulnerabilities might affect your systems, evaluating their severity and prioritizing remediation efforts. Using context ensures that your vulnerability remediation and change management efforts are practical and will save you time in the long run.