Vulnerability management is the ongoing strategy of identifying, assessing, reporting on, managing, mitigating and remediating cyber vulnerabilities across your organizations’ infrastructure - including endpoints, workloads and software.
The goal of vulnerability management is to reduce the risk of security breaches by identifying and addressing vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by attackers.
Vulnerability management has become more complex in recent years. No longer can businesses solely focus on securing their “traditional perimeter” - such as desktops, printers, routers and switches.
Evolving cyber threats, the increasing reliance on connected systems and cloud applications, as well as distributed work environments, all mean a company’s attack surface has evolved well beyond that of the traditional perimeter.
Organizations today that want to strengthen their security posture must implement a vulnerability management strategy that achieves cyber asset attack surface management (CAASM) and makes use of automation.
In this blog, we explore exactly how modern vulnerability management is implemented, along with some key reasons why automation is critical to success.
How is vulnerability management implemented?
Vulnerability management is a critical aspect of cyber security that helps organizations to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in their systems and software. It helps in minimizing the risk of security breaches and maintaining the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of critical information and resources.
In order to effectively manage vulnerabilities, organizations must establish a vulnerability management strategy that includes clear policies, procedures, and guidelines for identifying, classifying, and mitigating vulnerabilities.
Mitigation strategies for vulnerabilities typically involve patching or updating software, implementing workarounds, and enhancing security controls.
Yet, in most cases, the large majority of organizations are still implementing traditional vulnerability management assessments, which are performed just a few times a year and only offer point-in-time results of where a business’s vulnerabilities were when the assessment was performed.
Businesses that want to improve their security posture and better protect themselves from cyber risk and data loss must transition away from point-in-time assessments and adopt continuous attack surface management instead.
Read the blog: Penetration Testing vs. Vulnerability Scanning: What’s the Difference?
To do this successfully, automated tools such as data discovery and data classification are critical in helping your business to understand your current attack surface and security maturity.
With continuous visibility into your data, where it lives, who has access to it and its level of risk, your team can implement processes and technologies that both better protect your organization’s data and ensure you comply with data compliance regulations.
Why automating vulnerability management is a critical step to reduce risk
Vulnerability management is an ongoing process that requires constant monitoring and updating to ensure that new vulnerabilities are identified and addressed in a timely manner. To ensure a company’s infrastructure is protected and risk is kept to a minimum, vulnerability management must be an ongoing process.
This would be almost impossible to implement manually, unless your organization has an unlimited cybersecurity budget and a large team to implement it.
With that in mind, here are some key reasons why vulnerability management automation is key to reducing risk:
1. Save time
Automated vulnerability management tools can scan and assess a large number of systems and software in a short period of time, saving organizations significant amounts of time and effort compared to manual methods. In fact, many run continuously behind the scenes - ensuring your company’s risk level is always up to date. This allows organizations to identify and address vulnerabilities more quickly and keep their systems and software more secure.
2. Improved accuracy
Automated tools can perform scans and assessments with a high degree of accuracy, reducing the risk of missed vulnerabilities and ensuring your business is able to better strengthen its security posture.
3. Scalability
As organizations grow and expand, the number of systems and software they need to manage also grows. Automated vulnerability management tools can easily scale to handle large numbers of systems, making it more efficient and effective than manual methods.
4. Continuous monitoring
Automated vulnerability management tools can continuously monitor systems and software for new vulnerabilities, making it possible to address them as soon as they are discovered. This helps organizations to stay ahead of potential attacks and reduce the risk of security breaches. This is a far more effective method of detecting vulnerabilities than point-in-time assessments that quickly become out of date.
5. Compliance
Automated vulnerability management tools can help organizations stay compliant with data privacy regulations and standards such as HIPAA, GDPR or CCPA.
Are you interested in learning more about how you can improve your security posture by modernizing and automating your vulnerability management strategy? Get a demo of the Cavelo platform today.
We have developed an innovative attack surface management platform that empowers organizations to continuously identify sensitive data across all digital assets, helping them to prioritize data loss prevention, compliance and security initiatives based on risk benchmarking.
