Nowadays, everyone in the software development ecosystem should be aware of the security risks that lie in unmanaged open source vulnerabilities. Most people are familiar with some security vulnerabilities that make headlines, but many people do not know that they are only a sliver of the thousands of vulnerabilities that are revealed every year.

An accidental or unintended flaw in any system or software code that makes it exploitable in terms of access to illegal users or malicious behaviors such as worms, trojans, viruses or any other malware is known as a security vulnerability. The use of software that has already been exploited or the use of default or weak passwords may also lead to making the system vulnerable.  

Organizations and business enterprises are bound by many regulations and industry standards to always monitor their networks and systems. All potential threats and risks that may come from malicious activities are managed effectively. In order to do this, all business operations must be streamlined. Companies utilize many products to achieve this integration. However, this makes monitoring for vulnerabilities difficult because of the complexity of various tools.

Recent data breaches show that there is no system immune to cyber attacks. Any company that manages, stores, transmits, or handles data has to institute and enforce tools to monitor their cyber environment, identify security vulnerabilities, and close security holes immediately. Before identifying certain dangers to data systems, it’s essential to know the difference between cyber threats and vulnerabilities. 

Similar to how software bugs are triaged for a severity level, so too are security vulnerabilities as they need to be assessed for impact and risk, which aids in vulnerability management. The forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) is an international organization of trusted security scientists and computer researchers that have received the task of creating best practices and tools for incident responses teams, as well as standardizing security methodologies and policies.
One of FIRST’s initiatives is the Special Interest Group (SIG) that is responsible for developing and maintaining the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) specification to assist the security team to understand and prioritize the severity of a security vulnerability. 

With the massive shift to remote work due to COVID-19 – with upwards of 42% of US employees now working remotely according to Stanford professor William D. Eberle – there’s been an uptick in security breaches. It seems reasonable to expect this trend to continue as working from home is normalized and more employees use personal devices to access the infrastructure necessary to perform their duties.

Here’s a quick rundown of the largest data security breaches from last year:

Cybercriminals are always looking to take advantage of your computer security vulnerabilities. While the objectives of these cybercriminals may differ in terms of monetary gains, political moves, or prestige, they pose a major threat to your company. 
Part of safeguarding your business against cyber attacks and threats is to take into consideration different types of vulnerabilities that may put your software at risk and securing those weaknesses before an attacker can exploit them. What are the important software security vulnerabilities and how can you counter them? 

What is a zero-day vulnerability?

A zero-day (or 0-day) vulnerability is a software vulnerability that hasn’t been publicly disclosed or was recently discovered due to a successful attack. Once the threat is discovered, the race is on to patch the vulnerability before it can be exploited. In other words, the software developers have zero days to fix the vulnerability.