Vulnerability management is vital for addressing complex security challenges and achieving compliance. Having a structured vulnerability management program enables your security team to systematically find and address vulnerabilities as they develop.
This is important because continuous monitoring is a central element of many compliance frameworks. Proactively identifying and addressing network vulnerabilities makes the entire organization more resilient against sophisticated threats.
As organizations become more complex, the need for a formal vulnerability management program framework grows. Keeping up with cloud infrastructure deployments and a constantly growing attack surface demands an efficient, well-organized approach.
Your vulnerability management program framework is a set of policies that informs your organization’s specific goals and methods for addressing vulnerabilities. It goes beyond choosing a vulnerability scanner and establishes standard operating procedures throughout your organization.
4 Steps of a Vulnerability Management Program
At the heart of every vulnerability management program is a vulnerability scanner. However, simply running a scan is not enough to reduce security risks and meet compliance needs. Your organization needs a comprehensive program that ensures vulnerabilities are identified and addressed in a continuous, proactive way.
Every organization has a unique set of technologies and business processes. Vulnerabilities can impact these assets differently based on how they are configured. As a result, every organization will have a unique vulnerability management program designed to meet its needs.
The following list shows a general example of how a enterprise vulnerability management program might look like:
1. Identify
The first step of any vulnerability management process is identifying the security flaws and weaknesses that exist in your environment. Commercial vulnerability scanners look through every accessible system on your network and compare their specifications with known vulnerabilities drawn from public databases.
The result is a comprehensive list of vulnerabilities impacting the systems and applications your organization uses. Advanced scanners may provide you with reports, metrics, and dashboards you can use in a variety of contexts.
2. Assess and analyze
Once you have a list of your organization’s vulnerabilities, you must decide how to address them. Even for a small organization, the length and complexity of this list can be daunting.
Some vulnerabilities will be relatively easy fixes. Others will be incredibly complicated to address. Some vulnerabilities correspond to severe risks, while others are far less likely to result in negative security outcomes.
Before you start remediating vulnerabilities, you must decide which ones to prioritize. This decision should be informed by your overall cybersecurity risk management strategy. You may choose to use a popular framework like the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) to simplify the process.
3. Address vulnerabilities
Now that you have a comprehensive, prioritized list of your organization’s security weaknesses, you can begin addressing them. This usually means doing one of three things:
- Remediating the vulnerability means fully patching faulty software, re-configuring vulnerable assets, and eliminating security weaknesses from your environment. Depending on the complexity of the vulnerability, this can be a simple task or a deep and complex one.
- Mitigating risk is the next-best option when full remediation is not possible. This might involve adding new security controls or monitoring vulnerable assets for indicators of compromise. It is often a temporary measure, put in place until a more permanent solution can be reached.
- Accepting risk is sometimes necessary. If the cost of remediation is higher than the risk involved, it might make sense to take no action at all—for now. This is commonly the case for low-risk vulnerabilities that don’t present an easy fix.
It’s important that security leadership, system owners, and network administrators are all involved in these decisions. Listen to stakeholders’ opinions about how to address known vulnerabilities and make sure they accept the outcome of the process.
4. Report
Continuously eliminating vulnerabilities from your system is a great way to improve your security posture, but it must also be communicated to stakeholders and regulators. The speed and accuracy of your reporting methods are important indicators of the health of your overall vulnerability management program.
Reporting vulnerability management outcomes can be challenging and time-consuming when performed manually. This is especially true for organizations that want to meet strict continuous monitoring requirements for compliance purposes.
Automated vulnerability management solutions that integrate with IT ticketing systems and patch management platforms make the process much easier. With these integrations in place, security teams can confidently demonstrate compliance without redirecting valuable talent away from high-impact security tasks.
Best practices for your vulnerability management program
- Start with executive buy-in and support. Without executive leadership on-board, your vulnerability management program is unlikely to meet its long-term goals. Make sure you have a streamlined internal approval process for product, legal, and IT leaders in your organization.
- Design your program around compliance requirements. Several high-profile compliance frameworks require continuous vulnerability management. If your organization is pursuing PCI-DSS, ISO 27001/27002, or FedRAMP compliance, your program should fit regulators’ specific requirements.
- Address backlogs proactively with each scan. You may not always address every vulnerability before it’s time for a new scan. This backlog can complicate remediation processes, so make sure your approach to prioritization takes backlog vulnerabilities into account.
- Conduct comprehensive scans. Modern enterprise environments consist of more than servers and desktop PCs. Your vulnerability scans should include cloud workloads, IoT devices, and mobile endpoints as well.
- Assess your vulnerabilities continuously. Cloud-enabled organizations can modify their infrastructure and provision new applications very rapidly. Your vulnerability management program framework must take this into account and continuously provide insight into your security posture.
- Invest in accelerated processes. Automation drives value by improving the efficiency and accuracy of vulnerability management operations. Streamline repetitive workflows using automated tools hosted on scalable infrastructure.
- Don’t forget about human-centered security weaknesses. While your vulnerability scanner will focus on technological security flaws, your business operations and workplace culture can also create vulnerabilities. Consider collaborating with human resources to identify and address insider risks.
- Entrust vulnerability management to a reputable managed service vendor. Managed detection and response vendors like Novawatch can provide you with scalable, on-demand vulnerability scanning and remediation services. Find out how we can help you meet strict compliance requirements and improve your security posture.
