As organizations become more dependent on digital infrastructures and are leveraging multi-cloud developer environments, their attack surface has increased. These open-source environments are part of the software supply chain and are being increasingly targeted by malicious actors, often by exploiting vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities can provide an open door for malicious actors to compromise your systems and data, resulting in data breaches, data exfiltration, or worse attacks. Managing these vulnerabilities is a crucial aspect of any effective cybersecurity strategy and can be done with vulnerability management tools that provide a streamlined and automated way to identify, evaluate, treat, and report vulnerabilities.
In this article, you’ll learn about the importance of vulnerability management, and the core functionality and roles vulnerability management tools play in a modern enterprise security department. We'll also explore the benefits of building a robust toolkit to manage vulnerabilities while showing you how these tools can make a big impact on your overall cybersecurity posture and address vulnerabilities found within the software supply chain. Additionally, we'll provide some guidance on what to consider when choosing the perfect vulnerability management tool for your enterprise.
We’ll help you navigate the landscape of vulnerability management tools and why they could make all the difference to your organization's security posture. Given the increase in threats and attacks exploiting more and more vulnerabilities — knowing how to manage them and minimize the risk of them exposing your company to an attack is crucial.
What Are Vulnerability Management Tools?
Vulnerability management tools are specialized solutions designed to automate or simplify the four critical steps of the vulnerability management process. Given that exploits often start with a vulnerability, these tools are essential to minimizing the risk of a compromise. While these tools have evolved and adapted to today’s current threats, the core objective of these vulnerability management solutions remains the same: to protect systems by identifying, evaluating, treating, and reporting vulnerabilities. Here’s a breakdown of each step.
Identification
The first step in any vulnerability management system is identification, which involves scanning systems, network devices, databases, virtual machines, servers, open ports, and services to identify potential security flaws. Vulnerability management tools play a pivotal role here by systematically and efficiently examining a vast range of potential vulnerability points that would be overwhelming for a single person or team.
As companies’ attack surfaces increase, vulnerabilities can be found in places that are least expected. Having a tool that automated the identification process can ensure speedy, comprehensive detection.
Evaluation
Next is the evaluation phase, where identified vulnerabilities are assessed based on the risk the vulnerability poses based on the underlying system or application, what an attacker can do if they exploit the vulnerability, and how critical that system is to that organization. Depending on the organization, it may have a standardized risk scoring scale to use that makes for easy evaluation. Here, vulnerability management solutions help in determining the severity and the potential impact of the vulnerability on the organization's operations.
Treatment
The treatment phase consists of three different options: remediation, mitigation, and acceptance, and leaders should take the option based on the vulnerability and the evaluation made in the prior phase. With remediation, the organization chooses to fix the vulnerability to eliminate any potential risk — this is often the best option. Mitigation may be the only option available if there’s no fix for a potential vulnerability, which is often the case for 0-day vulnerabilities. If this is the case, an organization should mobilize to ensure the vulnerability is limited in how it can impact the organization’s systems and remove any unnecessary connection.
With acceptance, the organization chooses not to take any action on the vulnerability. This may be because the system behind the vulnerability is near the end of its contract or because the risk is so minimal that any efforts to take action are best placed elsewhere.
Reporting
The final step in any effective vulnerability management tool is reporting. Proper documentation is critical to ensure the organization learns from each identified vulnerability and avoids reproducing the same issue. These tools help in creating comprehensive reports with detailed insights about the vulnerability, its severity, and the steps taken to address it. This can help with potential audits and investigations and also helps maintain the knowledge of a department as staff and teams change.
How Your Vulnerability Management Toolkit Can Make All the Difference
Building a robust vulnerability management toolkit doesn't merely add a layer of protection to your systems—it can make a dramatic impact on how your organization approaches security. Vulnerability management tools not only make it harder for attackers to breach your systems but also significantly improve the efficiency of your security team by ensuring your vulnerabilities are taken care of in a systematic way.
The benefits of having a well-equipped vulnerability management toolkit are multifold. First, it offers a proactive level of security by actively seeking out vulnerabilities that might otherwise go unnoticed until exploited by an attacker. For developer environments and DevSecOps teams, having this system in place can build in security as part of the development process and catch new vulnerabilities that are still being discovered.
Second, vulnerability management tools provide virtually immediate opportunities to fix vulnerabilities. Rather than waiting for an attacker to expose a weak point, these tools enable your team to address issues proactively. In many cases, fixing vulnerabilities is as simple as running a software update — by having an automated way of doing this, you’re minimizing the chance of having overlooked a key security release.
Third, by prioritizing vulnerabilities based on their risk score, vulnerability management tools help optimize operational efficiency. This systematic approach to remediation ensures that the most severe vulnerabilities are addressed first, so your efforts are in the best place they can be.
Lastly, these tools provide increased visibility into your organization's security posture through detailed reporting and root-cause analysis. These insights help identify patterns and trends in vulnerabilities, enabling continuous improvement of your security protocols and helping you stay ahead of potential vulnerabilities or issues in processes or strategies that may open your department up to risk.
What to Consider When Selecting Vulnerability Management Tools
When deciding on vulnerability management tools, it's crucial to consider a range of factors that will ensure the solution aligns with your enterprise’s needs. From cost to features, support, and more, the selection process for vulnerability management solutions should be thorough and well thought out and may need to include conversations with stakeholders in legal and IT.
One of the first considerations is the cost. While an inexpensive solution might be tempting, a low cost could mean limited capabilities or inadequate support particularly for enterprise requirements. As you’re assessing a solution, make sure it’s justifying its cost through advanced features and robust support.
The best vulnerability management solutions offer both active and passive detection capabilities to efficiently identify vulnerabilities. Active detection refers to proactive scanning of systems, while passive detection involves monitoring network traffic to identify potential security issues. This gives your enterprise the comprehensive detection capabilities necessary to optimally minimize risk.
Another critical feature to consider is the prioritization scale. The ability to rank vulnerabilities based on their severity allows you to remediate the most critical vulnerabilities first. Depending on whether or not your organization has a vulnerability risk score in place, you will likely want a tool that brings its own scaling system, saving you time and resources. For even more guidance, consider a tool that recommends appropriate actions based on the identified vulnerability. Being able to shortcut the decision between remediation vs mitigation is a good way to build more efficiency in your department through a vulnerability management tool.
Update frequency is another essential factor. Vulnerability management solution companies should provide frequent updates to their tools, ensuring they can detect and handle the latest vulnerabilities. Given that updates are released on a near-constant basis, vulnerability tools should be able to know when a release is out immediately so they can spot any potential gaps in software and system updates.
Compatibility with your existing systems and support for cloud services are other essential considerations given the modern makeup of companies today. The chosen solution should seamlessly integrate with your current IT infrastructure and offer comprehensive support. Here’s where speaking with your developers and IT team can be useful as you want to make sure a tool won’t be interrupting daily work tasks or slowing down systems and processes.
Vendor support is often ignored but necessary as well. Excellent customer support ensures that you'll have assistance when you need it, whether that's for troubleshooting, updates, or guidance on how to best use the tool.
Remember, selecting the right vulnerability management tool is about finding the best fit for your enterprise. With careful consideration of these factors, you can choose a solution that enhances your security posture while aligning with your operational needs and budget.
Secure Your Enterprise with Legit Security Vulnerability Management
Vulnerability management tools are designed to streamline and simplify the process of identifying, evaluating, treating, and reporting vulnerabilities. However, it's essential to remember that not all tools are created equal. Key factors such as cost, features, update frequency, compatibility, cloud support, and vendor support should all be carefully considered before making a final decision on which tool best suits your needs.
As organizations continue to expand their digital footprint, they should prioritize vulnerability management tools that offer breadth and depth in their identification and scanning capabilities. For many companies, the SLDC is an often ignored area that has become crucial to protect. More and more vulnerabilities are being discovered and attackers are making the software supply chain a prime target.
Organizations should look for a platform, like Legit Security, that addresses this new risk factor and provides a comprehensive vulnerability detection and management tool for the enterprise. Without addressing potential vulnerabilities within your developer environment you may be leaving key systems, applications, and code exposed that can have downstream effects on your development and business operations. This is where vulnerability management needs to take place and companies should prioritize tools that offer visibility and protective capabilities here.
Ready to learn more? Schedule a product demo or check out the Legit Security Platform.
