This article will offer a quick guide to vulnerabilities – what they are, how they can be exploited and the consequences of exploitation. A vulnerability is a weakness in an asset that can be exploited by cyber attackers. It’s a known issue that allows an attack to succeed. 

Security testing is an assessment of the sensitivity of a software vulnerability to various attacks. What type of attacks? Mainly unauthorized breaches into the system with the aim of extracting data about users or getting confidential information. With the help of vulnerabilities present in the software code, attackers can achieve their objectives.  

A zero-day is a weakness in hardware, software or firmware that is not known to the parties responsible for patching or fixing the flaw. The term zero refers to an attack that has zero days between the time the vulnerability is discovered and the first attack. Once a zero-day vulnerability is known to the public, it’s known as a one-day or n-day vulnerability.

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.