As Rootshell Security explains (https://www.rootshellsecurity.net/vulnerability-management/), vulnerability management is all about protecting your organization from an attack by identifying the vulnerabilities and implementing the best countermeasures. But what does that mean? In this post, we’ll explain the process of vulnerability management, including the steps required to implement it. We’ll also discuss the benefits of this process and the available tools to help you manage your organization’s vulnerabilities. So, if you’re looking for the best way to implement risk-based vulnerability management, read on.
The process of vulnerability management
- Identifying Vulnerabilities: In this step, you will identify the vulnerabilities in your organization, which are the risks that an attacker could exploit. You will also determine what information the attacker would need to exploit it.
- Exploiting Vulnerabilities: In this step, you will deploy countermeasures to neutralize these vulnerabilities. This includes implementing security measures such as patches, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems.
- Testing and Monitoring: This step will test your countermeasures to ensure they are working correctly and monitor them for breakage.
- Remediation: Once you have tested your countermeasures and determined that they are working correctly, you’ll implement them throughout your organization to prevent future attacks from occurring.
The Benefits of Vulnerability Management
In this section, we will discuss the benefits of risk-based vulnerability management, which are:
- It’s practical: Vulnerability management is one of the most efficient ways to protect your organization. It helps you identify the vulnerabilities and implement the best countermeasures to neutralize them.
- It’s economical: Vulnerability management is a cost-effective way to protect your organization from an attack. You can use it to reduce your organization’s costs since it can help you reduce the number of security incidents that occur by preventing them in the first place.
- It’s proactive: Vulnerability management helps you prevent potential attacks from occurring. Therefore, it is a proactive measure that will help you prevent an attack from happening.
- It’s consistent: Vulnerability management is consistent because it relies on all employees within your company to report any vulnerabilities that they come across. This makes it very easy for employees to report such vulnerabilities when they occur to be taken care of immediately.
The Tools That You Can Use for Vulnerability Management
In this section, we will discuss some of the tools that you can use for vulnerability management, which are:
- Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): SIEM tools provide security analysts with real-time information about their network or systems incidents. The information provided by these tools includes logs and data from intrusion detection systems and other security devices on the network. The main features of these tools include Real-time alerts. Alerts can be sent to a single person or multiple people. Alerts can be sent via email, SMS, instant message, or other communication channels. Signals can also be sent automatically via SNMP-based devices.
- Vulnerability scanners: Vulnerability scanners are software tools
that are designed to scan the network and systems of an organization for vulnerabilities. The main features of these tools include Scanning speed. Scanning speed can range from a few seconds to several hours, depending on the vulnerability. Scanning scope Vulnerability scanners can scan your network for vulnerabilities within specific networks and systems or across all networks and systems in your organization. - Firewalls: Firewalls are devices used to control traffic between computers on a network. They come in different forms, such as hardware firewalls, software firewalls, proxy firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDS), and virtual private networks (VPN). Firewall types include stateful packet filtering firewall (SPF), stateless packet filtering firewall (SPF), application layer gateway (ALG), internet security association and key management protocol (ISAKMP), Internet key exchange protocol version 2 (IKEv2), IPsec tunneling protocols such as IKEv1 and IKEv2, and IPsec-based virtual private networks (VPN).
- Intrusion Detection Systems: IDSs are software used to detect intrusion attempts on the network. The main features of these tools include: Alerts Alerts can be sent to a single person or multiple people. Alerts can be sent via email, SMS, instant message, or other communication channels. Signals can also be sent automatically via SNMP-based devices.
As illustrated above in this article, the risk-based vulnerability management process is a good practice that can be used to improve your organization’s security posture.
Judy Jackson is a digital marketing professional and a prolific writer for Frogman.org.uk. With over a decade of experience in the industry, Judy specializes in crafting compelling content that helps businesses enhance their online presence and connect with their target audience.
