Network Security
Vulnerability Management
Privileged Access Management
Endpoint Security
Threat Hunting
Unified Endpoint Management
Email & Collaboration Security
Contents:
Where Do Organizations Struggle With Vulnerability Management?
With over 60% of companies having been the victims of cyberattacks in the last year, you can see that companies seem to be struggling with the way in which they manage vulnerabilities. Vulnerability management can be a daunting operation, and at times confusing, but most problems can be fixed quickly.
When it comes to challenges, these are the most common:
Lack of visibility
Many businesses have poor insight into their inventory and assets. You consult your asset inventory after a new vulnerability is found to ascertain how many assets are in danger and how many can be patched without risk.
But this task is impossible without a complete profile of each asset. This is why currently shadow IT assets represent the biggest challenge with vulnerability management that companies face.
You cannot defend what you cannot see, thus to have any hope of securing your network, you must have comprehensive sight over it.
Prioritization and risk understanding
Every day, thousands of new vulnerabilities are created, posing a variety of issues for security teams.
Because of their sheer number and complexity, new vulnerabilities must be prioritized according to the threats they pose to your company’s assets as they emerge.
As the severity of some vulnerabilities can frequently be deceiving, priority needs to be given to the risks that are most damaging to an organization’s most valuable assets. This is where experience and knowledge of the entire risk are crucial.
Risks can be calculated based on factors such as:
- The criticality of the assets;
- The popularity of the vulnerability;
- Availability of public exploits;
- The severity, scope, exploitability, and damage the vulnerability can bring.
Not thinking of vulnerability management as a continuous process
Organizations will find it difficult to limit the flow of vulnerabilities when the vulnerability management process is episodic and not continuous. Working with a constant backlog of security concerns only raises the dangers associated with vulnerability management.
Organizations need a continuous vulnerability management process aimed at enhancing security and strengthening the security posture.
Ownership & responsibility over assets
Your security is often compromised since asset ownership is frequently based on dated spreadsheets or imprecise data from many sources.
There must be an owner for every asset or asset group, and this owner is responsible for maintaining records, updating information, and alerting the proper parties to threats and vulnerabilities.
Coordinating processes across different teams
Patch management is handled by IT operations for many large businesses, and vulnerability scanning is handled by cybersecurity teams. However, each team is involved and accountable for helping to manage and secure business endpoints.
While well-defined roles are crucial for risk management, this does not require gaps to exist. Platforms that provide a single endpoint and vulnerability management perspective can aid in easing the coordination challenges amongst these various teams.
Numerous unmanageable vulnerabilities
Because multiple systems are integrated throughout an organization’s network if one system fails, it frequently has a domino effect.
Many organizations now rank vulnerabilities according to the importance of their assets. But frequently, this produces too much data for remediation teams to respond wisely. This may result in the discovery of possibly millions of serious vulnerabilities in bigger organizations.
How, then, can the crucial vulnerabilities be given top priority? To truly understand the actual danger in your environment, more knowledge and context are required.
When prioritizing threats, organizations may consider additional variables including the value or exploitability of an asset, the relationship between a vulnerability and the accessibility of publicly available exploits, and others.
Overcoming Pain Points: How to Get Past Vulnerability Management Challenges
Keep a complete asset inventory
The importance of an accurate, current inventory of digital assets is known by every IT professional. You must have a thorough understanding of the assets that are present in your organization in order to maintain it secure against threats. Run routine IT asset scans and make sure all of your assets’ details are kept in a database even if you haven’t used them.
Vulnerability prioritization
Maybe there will be times when you encounter a massive pile of vulnerabilities that need to be addressed. A common mistake companies make is that after identifying vulnerabilities they move directly to the remediation and mitigation stage, ignoring prioritization or taking it very lightly.
Every organization has its specific set of goals, risk tolerance, and priorities, so when prioritizing vulnerabilities make sure to take into consideration your business’s needs and objectives. I have also written a guide on how to prioritize vulnerabilities effectively that you can check out.
Adopt an ongoing vulnerability management approach
Instead of being episodic, an effective vulnerability management program is ongoing. Organizations would struggle to regulate the flow of vulnerabilities and accumulate vulnerability debt if they do not adopt a continuous strategy. This is a significant issue businesses face.
Working with a constant backlog of security concerns to handle can make the situation unbearable given how challenging it is already to remain on top of emerging vulnerabilities. Use an ongoing strategy that is focused on continuing and automated vulnerability identification rather than sporadic scanning. One of the cornerstones to creating a security posture that is characterized by constant improvement is to do this.
Automize your processes
Many organizations believe that handling and patching vulnerabilities manually is enough, but in reality, it can be inefficient, put a lot of stress on your IT team, and block essential resources for extended periods. Nowadays, choosing an automated solution seems to be the best course of action. Fortunately, Heimdal®’s Patch & Asset Management solution is beneficial to your company.
With our solution, you will be able to:
- Patch Windows, Linux, macOS, Third-Party, and even proprietary apps, all in one place;
- Generate software and assets inventories;
- Easily achieve compliance with automatically generated detailed reports (GDPR, UK PSN, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, NIST);
- Automatically conduct vulnerability and risk management processes;
- Close vulnerabilities, mitigate exploits, deploy updates both globally and locally, anytime, from anywhere in the world;
- Customize your solution based to perfectly fit the needs of your organization.
Enjoy a hyper-automated, fully customizable solution that you control! Additionally, we deliver locally to your endpoints using HTTPS transfers and repackaged, ad-free encrypted packages.
Heimdal® Patch & Asset Management Software
- Schedule updates at your convenience;
- See any software assets in inventory;
- Global deployment and LAN P2P;
- And much more than we can fit in here...
Conclusion
Each business deals with its unique set of challenges when it comes to vulnerability management, given by its size, its resources, employees’ cybersecurity training, and other factors. Vulnerability management challenges are common, but luckily there are solutions available to help you overcome them.
If you want to keep up to date with everything we post, don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube for more cybersecurity news and topics.
Cristian is a Content Editor & Creator at Heimdal®, where he developed a deep understanding of the digital threat landscape. His style resonates with both technical and non-technical readers, proof being in his skill of communicating cybersecurity norms effectively, in an easy-to-understand manner.
