A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO VULNERABILITY MANAGEMENT

Due to the increasing number of capacity vulnerabilities and changing attack surfaces, companies should prioritize strengthening their cyber safety through the use of vulnerability control in a proactive manner. This essay examines practical methods for negotiating the complex terrain of cybersecurity risks.

What is vulnerability management?

In cybersecurity, vulnerability management is the ongoing process of identifying, prioritizing, and remediating weaknesses and gaps in your systems, hardware, software, technical infrastructure, and operational procedures in place. It is a way to constantly patch up the holes that hackers might try to exploit. Among these vulnerabilities are insecure codes, weak or missing policies, cloud misconfigurations, lack of encryption, and others.

What are the types of vulnerabilities?

The primary goal is to uncover any weaknesses or gaps that could be exploited that jeopardize the security and functionality of the systems. Examples of vulnerabilities include:

• Insecure code
• Unpatched software
• Cloud and device misconfigurations
• Lack of encryption
• Default authentication
• Lack of security awareness and training
• Improper internal controls
• Weak or missing policies
• Zero-day vulnerabilities

Once these vulnerabilities are identified, the subsequent stage involves strategically planning for the implementation of controls aimed at mitigating or minimizing these identified weaknesses.

Why is vulnerability management important?

Understanding your business’s best approach to vulnerability management comes from first assessing its vulnerabilities. Once we determine where the major vulnerabilities are, we can integrate a framework to:

• Reduce Risk of Attacks: By proactively identifying and patching vulnerabilities, you make it significantly harder for attackers to access your systems.
• Protect Sensitive Data: vulnerabilities are the reason why data (such as customer details, financial records or intellectual property) can get stolen or tampered with.
• Provide Evidence for Audits: Regular vulnerability scans and reports prove how you manage vulnerabilities and take measures against them.
• Improve Security Posture: Vulnerability management is not about only fixing vulnerabilities. It’s about strengthening your whole security posture by identifying and addressing potential risks.
• Ensure Compliance with Regulations: In many sectors, vulnerability management is important for a strong security posture. Secure service providers, for example, follow HIPAA to safeguard health information, and ISO 27001 to manage information security.
• Save Time and Resources: Despite the initial investment needed by vulnerability management it eventually saves substantial time and resources. Thereby avoiding costly security events, incidents of breaches of data privacy and downtime that may result from failure to address vulnerabilities proactively.

What are Vulnerability Management Frameworks?

There are several frameworks that can help you implement a vulnerability management program. These frameworks provide a structured approach to identifying, classifying, prioritizing, and remediating vulnerabilities. Some popular frameworks include:

• The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework
• The ISO 27001 information security management standard
• The MITRE ATT&CK framework

By following a vulnerability management framework, you can ensure that your organization is taking a systematic approach to cybersecurity and reducing its risk of being attacked.

What are the Steps of the vulnerability management process?

As explained previously, vulnerability management is a set of procedures helping organizations identify, assess, and patch vulnerabilities. Among the main steps in the vulnerability management process are:

• Continuous process: Your system should never remain unchecked because new vulnerabilities might arise all the time.
• Identification: First comes identifying weaknesses in your system by running manual security assessments or automated scanners.
• Prioritization: Prioritizing which vulnerability to patch first is crucial because not all vulnerabilities are identical, and some are riskier than others. You should assess the severity of the vulnerability and its effect to determine which to patch first.
• Remediation: After finding vulnerabilities, and then prioritizing them, it’s time to fix them.

Vulnerability Management Best Practices

1. Continuous Discovery and Assessment:

• Regular Scanning: Conduct vulnerability scans frequently, at least quarterly for critical systems. SKELDUS supports integration with various scanning tools for flexibility.
• Penetration Testing: Supplement vulnerability scans with periodic penetration testing to simulate real-world attacks and identify potential weaknesses.

2. Prioritization and Remediation:

• Risk-Based Approach: Prioritize vulnerabilities based on severity, exploitability, and potential business impact. Focus on addressing critical and high-risk vulnerabilities first.
• Patch Management: Have a system in place for deploying security patches promptly. SKELDUS can potentially integrate with patching tools to streamline this process (further investigation required).
• Automated Remediation: Leverage automation for vulnerability remediation whenever possible. SKELDUS offers pre-defined mitigation tasks for common vulnerabilities.

3. Effective Reporting and Documentation:

• Detailed Reports: Generate comprehensive reports that document identified vulnerabilities, their severity, and the actions taken for remediation.
• Auditable Records: Maintain auditable records of vulnerability scans and remediation efforts to demonstrate compliance with regulations. SKELDUS facilitates evidence collection for audits.

4. Integration and Automation:

• Centralized Platform: Use a centralized vulnerability management platform like SKELDUS to consolidate findings from various scanning tools and manage the entire remediation process.
• Automation: Automate tasks wherever possible, such as uploading scan results, creating mitigation tasks, and deploying patches (depending on integration capabilities).

5. Continuous Improvement:

• Regular Reviews: Periodically review your vulnerability management program to ensure its effectiveness and adapt it to address evolving threats.
• Teamwork and Training: Foster a culture of security awareness within your organization and provide regular training for staff to identify and report potential security issues.

Vulnerability Management Approach with SKELDUS

At SKELDUS, vulnerability management takes a two-pronged approach to secure your systems:

• Compliance and Evidence Collection: It provides the audit trails and reports needed to demonstrate that you've addressed security weaknesses. This is crucial for meeting regulatory requirements (SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001) and involves uploading vulnerability scan results to show there are no high-risk vulnerabilities present.
• Proactive Threat Mitigation: It goes beyond just compliance and actively helps you manage the process of fixing security issues. SKELDUS facilitates this by: -- Identifying high-risk vulnerabilities from scan results. -- Offering pre-defined mitigation tasks to address these vulnerabilities. -- Allowing manual creation of tasks for identified issues.

Vulnerability management with SKELDUS is a comprehensive strategy that ensures you have the documentation to prove your security posture and equips you with the tools to actively fix potential security holes in your systems. Through SKELDUS, you will benefit:

• Simplified Workflows: SKELDUS offers a user-friendly interface that streamlines vulnerability management processes, from uploading scan results to creating mitigation tasks.
• Improved Efficiency: Automation features and pre-defined tasks save valuable time and resources, allowing your security team to focus on more strategic initiatives.
• Enhanced Security Posture: By proactively identifying and addressing vulnerabilities, SKELDUS helps you reduce your attack surface and strengthen your overall security posture.

How SKELDUS can Help Manage Vulnerabilities:

SKELDUS offers features to streamline vulnerability management, including:

• Phase 1: Upload vulnerability scan results and create mitigation tasks.
• Phase 2: Integrate with vulnerability scanners to automate test result upload and task creation for high-risk vulnerabilities.
• Task Templates: Utilize pre-defined mitigation steps for common vulnerabilities.

SKELDUS & Vulnerability Management: Discover More

Objective of Vulnerability Management:

• Evidence for Auditing Process: Skeldus helps in providing the necessary evidence for the auditing process by allowing the import of test results. These results serve as proof of mitigation, demonstrating that there are no high-risk vulnerabilities in the system.
• Task Management for High-Risk Vulnerabilities: Skeldus assists in managing tasks related to mitigating high-risk vulnerabilities. It allows for the creation of mitigation tasks based on the findings from vulnerability scans.

Integration with Vulnerability Scanners:

• Integration with Common Scanners: Skeldus integrates with common vulnerability scanners or allows for the manual upload of results. This ensures that the tool can work seamlessly with popular scanning tools.
• Automatic Task Creation: The integration with scanning tools enables the automatic creation of tasks for high-risk vulnerabilities. Additionally, the tool may provide descriptions of mitigation measures within the generated tasks.

Compliance with Security Standards:

Support for Compliance Controls: Skeldus helps in fulfilling the required controls for different security standards, such as SOC 2, HIPAA, and ISO 27001. It facilitates routine maintenance, infrastructure patching, vulnerability scanning, and remediation tracking.

Types of Vulnerability Scans Supported:

Comprehensive Scan Support: Skeldus supports various types of vulnerability scans, including container scans, code and dependency scans, server scans, network vulnerability scans, Host-based Vulnerability Scans, Web Application Vulnerability Scans, Database Vulnerability Scans, Wireless Network Vulnerability Scans, Mobile Application Vulnerability Scans, and Cloud Infrastructure Vulnerability Scans. This versatility allows organizations to adapt their vulnerability management strategy based on their specific needs and the requirements of auditors.

Mitigation Task Templates:

Efficient Task Creation: Skeldus provides task templates for common vulnerabilities. This feature streamlines the manual creation of mitigation tasks, ensuring that appropriate measures are taken to address identified vulnerabilities.

How to automate vulnerability management?

Vulnerability management can be automated by using tools that can scan systems for vulnerabilities, prioritize them, and even deploy patches in some cases. Automating vulnerability management can significantly improve efficiency and effectiveness. Here's how you can achieve it:

1. Utilize Vulnerability Scanning Tools: Automated Scans: Schedule automated vulnerability scans to run regularly on your systems (daily, weekly, or quarterly depending on criticality). This eliminates the need for manual scanning and ensures consistent coverage.
2. Leverage Integration Platforms: Centralized Management: Integrate your vulnerability scanner with a vulnerability management platform like SKELDUS. This allows for centralized data collection, analysis, and prioritization of vulnerabilities from various scans.
3. Automate Task Creation: Pre-defined Tasks: Implement pre-defined mitigation tasks within your vulnerability management platform (like SKELDUS). When a vulnerability is identified, the platform automatically creates a corresponding task with mitigation steps, saving time and ensuring consistency. Risk-based Prioritization: Configure the platform to automatically prioritize vulnerabilities based on pre-defined criteria like severity, exploitability, and potential impact. This helps focus resources on the most critical issues first.
4. Automate Patch Management: Patch Deployment Automation: Explore integration with patch management tools (depending on your platform capabilities). This allows for automatic deployment of security patches upon identification of critical vulnerabilities.
5. Automate Reporting: Scheduled Reports: Set up automated reports to be generated periodically, summarizing identified vulnerabilities, remediation efforts, and overall program effectiveness. This streamlines reporting for audits and provides valuable insights for continuous improvement.

By automating these tasks, SKELDUS can help organizations save time and resources while improving their overall security posture.

Additional Considerations for SKELDUS Users:

Leverage Pre-defined Tasks: Take advantage of SKELDUS's pre-defined mitigation tasks for common vulnerabilities to save time and ensure consistent remediation. Utilize Manual Task Creation: For less common vulnerabilities, create custom mitigation tasks within SKELDUS to address any identified security weakness. Maintain Integration with Scanning Tools: Ensure smooth integration between SKELDUS and your preferred vulnerability scanning tools for seamless data flow. By following these best practices and leveraging the capabilities of SKELDUS, you can create a robust vulnerability management program that effectively safeguards your organization from cyber threats.

Conculsion

In summary, Skeldus has implemented a comprehensive vulnerability management process that facilitates evidence collection, task management, compliance with security standards, integration with popular scanning tools, and a structured approach to vulnerability management. It aims to provide a user-friendly platform for organizations to effectively manage and mitigate security vulnerabilities in their systems.