What Is Vulnerability Management?

Enterprise networks frequently experience changes in endpoint devices, software, and files, which can introduce risk to the organization. To mitigate this, companies can implement foundational security controls like file integrity monitoring (FIM), which tracks changes to essential files and helps restore them if unauthorized. Additionally, organizations may use these controls to monitor for vulnerabilities introduced by new devices. However, FIM alone is not enough. Companies need a vulnerability management program to ensure comprehensive risk assessment, threat minimization, and compliance.

What is the Role of Vulnerability Management?

Vulnerability management, also known as vulnerability assessment, involves identifying, assessing, prioritizing, and addressing security vulnerabilities in computer systems, networks, software, and other IT environments. The goal is to reduce the risk of cybercriminals exploiting these vulnerabilities and maintain the security and integrity of an organization's systems. Businesses use vulnerability management tools to monitor continuously and remediate vulnerabilities to proactively defend against security risks.

What are the Common Types of Vulnerabilities in Cybersecurity?

A cybersecurity vulnerability is a security weakness in an IT system that cybercriminals can exploit to carry out an attack. They come in many forms, and malicious actors will exploit any of them if organizations and individuals fail to implement an effective risk mitigation strategy. The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) identifies three primary types of vulnerabilities:

• Flaws: A flaw is an unintended functional change, typically the result of poor design or mistakes made during implementation. They are the most common type of vulnerability and a particular favorite of cybercriminals. Flaws include:
  • Known Vulnerabilities: These vulnerabilities are flaws that have been identified, documented, and published, often with a unique identifier like those in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database. They typically have published patches or remediation steps that organizations can use to mitigate risk.
  • Zero-Day Vulnerabilities: These are new vulnerabilities that are typically unknown to the vendor and have no available patch or fix. Cybercriminals exploit them before vendors discover or fix them, making them difficult to defend against.
• Features: Features are intentional functionalities that attackers can misuse to breach a system. While they serve a purpose in the technology, they can be exploited by attackers. One famous example is JavaScript, widely used in dynamic web content, which attackers use to input query strings into forms to access, steal, or contaminate protected data.
• User Error: These vulnerabilities often arise from mistakes made by system administrators (such as enabling vulnerable features or failing to fix a known vulnerability) or from more simple user errors, such as using weak, easy-to-guess passwords, installing malware, or divulging information that may be useful to an attacker.

How Do You Implement a Successful Vulnerability Management Program?

Implementing a successful vulnerability management program relies on a four-stage, holistic vulnerability management framework:

1. Asset Discovery

Understanding the threats facing your organization starts with having a clear inventory of your assets. You must systematically categorize, assess, and monitor all your assets, including hardware, software, data, and network components. This approach will help you improve your security posture and gain insights into what you own and where potential vulnerabilities may lie.

Conducting these audits is essential for maintaining an accurate and up-to-date asset inventory. They help identify any unauthorized applications or shadow IT technologies and systems used without official approval. By actively eliminating unauthorized elements, you reduce the risk of unmonitored vulnerabilities that could expose your organization to cyber threats.

Moreover, regular assessments of your IT landscape help you understand what components need protection, allowing you to establish robust security measures and tailored remediation efforts to safeguard your most critical assets.

2. Scanning and Reporting

You then need to conduct a comprehensive assessment of all your assets using a vulnerability scanner. These scanners systematically analyze your network, systems, and web apps to identify any known vulnerabilities. They generate detailed reports using CVE identifiers, which provide specific information about each detected issue, including its nature and potential impact.

These reports typically assign each CVE a severity rating using the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS). CVSS scores range from 0 to 10, with higher scores indicating more critical vulnerabilities. These metrics help prioritize vulnerabilities by assessing factors such as exploitability, potential damage, and the complexity of a potential cyber attack so you can focus remediation efforts on the most urgent risks.

Vulnerability scans should be performed at least quarterly, but more frequent scanning is recommended for dynamic environments. Organizations with rapid changes, such as regular software updates or new deployments, may benefit from monthly or even weekly scans. Additionally, scans should be conducted after significant changes or following security incidents.

3. Analysis and Prioritization

While CVSS ratings offer valuable insight into the potential risk associated with vulnerabilities, they do not consider the unique configurations and specific circumstances of each individual environment. Essentially, this means that a vulnerability that may be low risk in one setting could pose a significant threat in another.

To overcome this issue, it's important to incorporate penetration testing into your vulnerability management strategy. Penetration tests, or pen tests, simulate real-world attacks by actively exploiting identified vulnerabilities to provide further context and demonstrate the potential impacts of flaws. If a pen tester can exploit a vulnerability to gain access to your systems, so can a cybercriminal.

These tests help prioritize vulnerabilities because they reveal which are genuinely critical and most in need of immediate remediation. By identifying these vulnerabilities, you can allocate resources more effectively and focus remediation efforts where they matter most.

4. Response and Re-Testing

Once you have established your priorities, you can begin remediating critical vulnerabilities. Security teams typically use various strategies, including applying software patches as part of a patch management process, performing updates to operating systems and applications, or addressing misconfigurations. In short, they close any security gaps an attacker could exploit.

However, the work doesn't stop after remediation. Vulnerability management is a continuous process. You then need to conduct additional penetration tests to validate the effectiveness of your remediation efforts and conduct continuous vulnerability management scans. These follow-up tests will confirm that vulnerabilities have been addressed or, at the very least, that they no longer represent a significant threat to your organization. This process is crucial for maintaining a strong security posture across your entire attack surface and continuously protecting your ecosystem against emerging threats.

How Does a Vulnerability Management Process Integrate with an Organization's Security Strategy?

Vulnerability management solutions are an essential part of a holistic risk management and wider security strategy. In addition to helping to identify, assess, and mitigate vulnerabilities based on their risk levels, they facilitate compliance with regulatory standards and frameworks and promote cross-departmental collaboration by involving a wide range of stakeholders, including security, operations, and IT teams in identifying and addressing vulnerabilities across the entire IT infrastructure, thereby fostering a culture of security awareness.

Continuous monitoring and remediation efforts help security teams respond to threats in real-time and adapt security measures to evolving threats. By integrating vulnerability management into your security strategy, you create a proactive defense mechanism that safeguards critical assets and reduces the risk of breaches.

How Fortra Can Help

Fortra provides a vulnerability management tool that meets all these requirements. It helps organizations discover all assets, prioritize vulnerabilities, and minimize manual effort by integrating with existing tools and systems. Fortra's vulnerability management solution also comes equipped with advanced vulnerability scoring that identifies top risks.

To learn about how Fortra can help your organization, click here.