As we advance into the age of digital globalization, cybersecurity materializes as a pressing concern for anyone who capitalizes on technology, and business leaders must move away from the idea that cybersecurity is solely an IT responsibility. Everyone’s responsible, from the CEO to frontline employees, warrants a culture of awareness, accountability, and continuous learning. Organizations of all sizes and industries are targeted by cyberattacks because they hold sensitive data and personally identifiable information. The larger the business, the more susceptible it is to an assault launched by malicious actors.
Vulnerability management effectively reduces corporate risk by eliminating weaknesses or gaps in the security system that a threat actor can exploit to gain unauthorized access, attempt to steal data or cause damage to the system. It’s a challenging undertaking considering the number of potential vulnerabilities, to say nothing of the limited resources available for remediation. Industry best practice standards such as ISO 27001, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, and COBIT were designed to be supportive tools for managers, allowing them to implement timely vulnerability remediation. Recent cyber and ransomware attacks illustrate that many organizations fall short of addressing known vulnerabilities with due care and attention.
In Most Cases, Vulnerabilities are Exploited to Attack The Corporate IT Structure
The Internet has grown substantially, which translates into the fact that companies are performing more daily transactions in cyberspace than in the real world. The COVID-19 pandemic has helped drive rapid growth in online activity, and as a result of the widespread usage of the digital environment, perpetrators have shifted their evil deeds to cyberspace. Emerging technologies like cloud computing, the Internet of Things, social media, and wireless communication, to name a few, can bring cyber risks that organizations must mitigate under the existing capabilities. It’s imperative to fortify cybersecurity capabilities, along with third-party or supply chain management and privileged access management.
When discussing vulnerabilities, we refer to a feature or condition that, if ill-used, renders an organization susceptible to the risk of cyber-attack. Most data breaches are caused by known, unpatched vulnerabilities – in other words, security flaws or weaknesses in software, hardware, or systems that haven’t yet been addressed through an update or patch. Your vulnerability management system should be able to distinguish existing security and software misconfigurations, high-risk software, the incorrect setup of web servers, and so forth. Today’s threat landscape is different, and the multitude of launched attacks demands the best-in-class solutions to address vulnerabilities in a company’s IT assets.
Reducing Cyber Risk Requires A Comprehensive Setup With Diverse Components
Implementing effective vulnerability management is of the essence for any organization to safeguard its systems and data from cybersecurity attacks that continue to evolve into new forms that leverage vulnerabilities. While it’s difficult to prevent sophisticated attacks, taking simple precautions can hinder most malicious attempts. A unified program is necessary to address all types of vulnerabilities in people, processes, and technology. In what follows, we’ll discuss the most important elements of a successful vulnerability management framework.
IT Governance
IT governance, which is the responsibility of the board of directors and executive management, provides a structure to ensure that IT investments support business objectives. The focus is on performing and transforming IT to meet the present and future demands of the business and its customers. Small-to medium-sized enterprises reach a point where they need a more mature IT governance to patch the system within the defined timeframe because customer channels are vulnerable to disruption. If that’s not possible, irrespective of the reason, compensatory remediation measures must be applied.
IT and Cyber Risk Management
Threats can take highly reliable systems offline, making them vulnerable to additional attacks, or cause chaos in other respects, leading to stolen data, lost revenue, regulatory fines, and loss of reputation. With improved visibility of threats, IT leaders can implement measures to minimize the attack surface by accurately inventorying assets and removing dispensable applications and devices. There’s no way to guarantee you won’t become the victim of a cyberattack, so heightened due diligence and an ongoing review of controls with external/internal partners are of the utmost importance.
IT Service Management Process Integration
Vulnerability management is only one component of the security stack, which means it must integrate with neighboring cybersecurity programs and solutions the organization relies on, which allows for issues to be handled in the nick of time and, if necessary, escalated as security incidents. You can effectively address the vulnerabilities through a managed approach and enjoy end-to-end support from the very get-go. Cyberduo, for instance, guarantees unlimited support, which is vital when handling major vulnerability outbreaks like POODLE that exploit the loopholes in the legacy encryption standards.
IT and Security Tool Landscape Integration
With the fast expansion of cloud computing and SaaS applications, security professionals rely on a variety of tools to be proactive in protecting the organization, but as the toolkit grows, many additional concerns emerge. The securities operations center (SOC) must receive relevant information regarding the attack surface to identify the changes that raise the risk of a potential attack vector. Several short-term actions can be applied to reduce the attack surface, including but not limited to training users to recognize phishing scams, applying OS patches, and revising software restriction policies.
Misconfigurations and New Vulnerabilities Appear on a Daily Basis
Without a clear strategy and active support from your leadership team, your vulnerability management program is likely to struggle for existence, meaning you’ll never know the true risk, and the ability to minimize hazards will be compromised. Misconfigurations and new vulnerabilities emerge every day and can immediately expose a network to attacks. In a perfect world, your security controls would automatically identify and inform you of any occurrence that jeopardizes the integrity and availability of your systems. Alas, we don’t live in a perfect world, and only continuous monitoring can help detect malicious actors who can launch sophisticated attacks from any corner of the globe.
For security teams, the attack surface they must defend is bigger than ever before, given the increase in the number of apps, devices, users, and resources that make up the corporate environment, and the resources required can be immense, so consider turning to a managed service provider to supplement the team or outsource vulnerability management.
