Medium-sized companies have a task for this 2020. They need to address many vulnerabilities identified daily. However, some of these companies lack the necessary resources to address all of them. In this case, the best thing you can do is use a risk-based approach. Prioritization will allow you to execute successful vulnerability management.
According to the Gartner Protection and Risk Infrastructure Protection Survey of 2019, only 40% of SMEs have a formal program to manage vulnerabilities. This means that 60% do not invest their money in preventing attacks on their vulnerabilities. Some SMEs don’t have the capital for a big security system, so they must seek accessible solutions. That is why prioritization is important to act on specific vulnerabilities. In this context, prioritization focused on critical systems allows action on specific vulnerabilities.
Prioritization vs. excess vulnerabilities
Vulnerability management is a central and fundamental function of your organization’s security program. Yet, SMEs are struggling to manage and address all their vulnerabilities. Now, in 2018 the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) identified 18,153 vulnerabilities. A company can’t filter out so many threats, so knowing how to focus on is the real key. Prioritization, remediation and mitigation efforts allow you to better use your limited resources. This will also allow you to have a better view of what is important for your business.
Other challenges: Having the capital, but not the staff
Vulnerability reports can discover hundreds and even thousands of possible breaches by analysis. A small team cannot always follow these programs due to a lack of resources or time. Because of this, many SMEs decide to outsource. Many security management service providers offer themselves to make this work for you. Even then, both teams must work together to clarify the priorities.
Prioritization tips
These deserve prioritization in the vulnerability management program. These methods allow you to ensure that your company can maintain its performance. Focus also on when your team implements a particular device. They provide information on the impact that the system would have on your operations. This extra context is imperative when determining which breaches would harm your business.
Learning to identify prioritization
The best resources SMEs have to identify critical systems are the business units and IT teams. Talking with your teams will give you an idea about what parts are valuable. Something good to do is also to turn to your business units. They don’t know much about IT, but they provide a different perspective on assets essential to your earnings. Certain applications may have more value and need in the performance of work tasks.
It is imperative to determine which exploited systems would most harm your business. They can, for example, use a system of vulnerability scores. This would help you define whether these threats, not yet exploited, are paramount. The extra context provided allows SMEs to focus on acting on these vulnerabilities.
Check how to mitigate the damage
Once you select the most critical areas, it is time to check how your defense will address them. And this is a job in which many areas of each company are already involved. For a while now, investors have been aware of the importance of prioritization in cybersecurity. Also, they take care of how catastrophic the infractions can be. From this year on, you should get away from traditional and reactive cybersecurity. This is the tendency to act after the perpetration of the attack. This leads to bad decisions about risk acceptance within vulnerability management programs.
It is important to make decisions about the level of resources they are willing to devote. It is also that they can define the terms associated with the repair of these failures. The vulnerability response comes in three forms. Patch management (or remediation), mitigating vulnerabilities through compensation controls and risk acceptance.
Manage patches better
Patch management must be part of an organization’s vulnerability management program. Structured patch management reduces risk and maintains business alignment. Organizations understand the importance of a patch within the context of the security environment. For example, an SSL patch may not be critical if the affected system is not exposed to the Internet.
Often and especially in the case of SMEs, it will not be possible to put in place all the patches. Besides, you can’t install all the patches immediately. Either Because the patch will prevent the use of an application; or because a time window to put in place change is not available in the short term. Part of a vulnerability management program is to identify mitigation controls. These failures must be seen as an alternative to the implementation of a patch.
Manage your Vulnerabilities with Tenable.io: Predictive Prioritization
An excellent way to manage vulnerabilities for SMEs is Tenable.io. It is a tool that uses a practical, asset-based approach to track vulnerabilities. It classifies your assets in the cloud and containers, integrating into your environment. Increase your security through better insights to prioritize relevant information.
