It is essential to remember that the end result of vulnerability management is remediation. One of the vital KPIs of a vulnerability management program is how many high-risk vulnerabilities are neutralized or removed before essential assets, confidential data and systems are compromised.

Why is Vulnerability Remediation Important?

Partners, customers, regulators and employees expect companies to put in place processes and policies that effectively and continuously protect data from malicious loss and accidental exposure. There is also zero tolerance for system slowdowns or disruptions. In short, meeting vulnerability remediation challenges has become an essential business activity.

Where Are Organizations Going Wrong In Terms Of Vulnerability Remediation?

From the onset, many organizations have an outdated idea of what vulnerability remediation involves. It’s not just about scanning your networks for cyber threats. An all-inclusive tactic to vulnerability management includes identifying, reporting, assessing and prioritizing exposures. Most importantly, it also involves risk context. 

Instead of just scanning for security breaches, a comprehensive approach to vulnerability remediation shows you how those gaps could be exploited and the aftermath of the occurrence.

Therefore, vulnerability remediation when executed correctly takes a mature approach where all aspects work harmoniously to reduce risk to business-critical assets. That is the objective all IT professionals and IT administrators should follow. 

Also, if you start the first principles, you can fail when it comes to implementation. With that in mind, we have highlighted some of the challenges organizations face when managing vulnerabilities. 

1. Failing to Correctly Prioritize Threats

   The inability to appropriately rank exposures is one of the most damaging issues that organizations currently face within the context of vulnerability management. Many organizations identify security gaps through scanning, then proceed to the remediation stage. On some level, that kind of urgency is understandable. But it is short-sighted and creates more risk.

   IT administrators and IT professionals of different organizations need to focus on prioritization through CVSS. Failure to prioritize it properly may lead to wasted resources as IT teams work towards addressing exposures that pose no real risk to critical business assets.

   Risk and threats will make the organization become vulnerable in different ways. The best way to remediate risk is to focus on the percentage of exposures that can be exploited. When it’s done in the right way, this level of prioritization can eliminate 99 percent of risk to sensitive business systems.

   What’s the best way to benefit from this approach to prioritization? Using a cutting-edge patch management solution that prioritizes exposures by using attack-centric risk context. An organization can use a tool that goes beyond limited CVSS scoring and shows the full picture of how likely each vulnerability is to be exploited and the risk each exploit poses to the assets.

2. Not Using a Continuous Approach

   The best way to utilize a vulnerability management program is ongoing rather than periodic. If organizations do not take a constant approach, they will struggle to control the flow of vulnerabilities and build up vulnerability debt. That’s a serious issue.

   Considering how hard it is to stay on top of emerging vulnerabilities, working with a constant backlog of security issues to address can make the whole situation unsustainable. Instead of irregular scanning and remediation, IT professionals can use an ongoing approach that is centered on automated and continuous vulnerability identification. This is one of the essential ways to develop a robust security posture that is defined by constant improvement.

3. Poor Communication and Unclear Organizational Structure

   When security teams do not have clear lines of communication and the right organizational structure, problems are certain to slip through the cracks. Too often, team members do not have clear roles, and they do not understand where they fit within the overall vulnerability management framework.

   When team members have clear roles with well-defined responsibilities, they can work together effectively. Instead of working in isolation and missing the greater picture, each person can work to meet their responsibilities and achieve their specific objectives. Also, they know how their work relates to the roles and responsibilities of others.

   Therefore, it’s important that the company’s leadership understand and are fully invested in the program, given how strong cybersecurity has become an essential strategic objective.

Vulnerability Remediation Issues

The consequences of failing to successfully manage vulnerabilities have never been higher. One data breach can lead to financial damage and the number of breaches continues to rise, without fail, every year. Truly, vulnerability remediation has left the realm of being just an IT expenditure – it should be a key business objective.

Therefore, to make that a reality, it’s essential to know that vulnerability management should be a continuous and multi-stage process. It’s also important to address the problems that snare so many smart IT departments to successfully manage vulnerabilities: the lack of organization and communication among teams and leaders.

The approach can pay huge dividends in terms of avoiding these drawbacks. As mentioned above, the best thing that can be done is to incorporate powerful vulnerability management tools that offer proper prioritization guidance and critical risk context.

Once your underlying approach is ideal and you are armed with the right tools, your enterprise will be far ahead of your competitors when it comes to protecting your most valuable assets. It’s also essential to get the services of experienced and professional IT companies that can help you with vulnerability remediation services. 

Consequently, if you need a cybersecurity tool that can create a strong troubleshooting background, with a focus on vulnerability remediation, choose Vicarius. Vicarius is a vulnerability management software that targets cybersecurity officers and operators, as well as IT managers and operators from the U.S. market.

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash