On November 3^rd, 2021, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released Binding Operational Directive 22-01, a compulsory direction with the goal of systematizing and standardizing vulnerability remediation across federal agencies except for defined “national security systems” and “certain systems operated by the Department of Defense or Intelligence Community.”

Besides death and taxes, there seems to be one more thing we can rely on as certain—software vulnerabilities.

Ask any IT or Infosec professional if they think patch management is important, and you’ll get an annoyed “of course.” But while the majority of organizations understand the importance of patching, implementation of patch management can be lackluster. With so many operating systems, expanding infrastructure, hybrid cloud environments, hundreds of applications, and thousands of assets, it can be difficult to maintain an effective strategy for what should be routine security hygiene. Every organization wants to minimize their risk profile, and an effective, efficient, and—above all—routine set of best practices is the first step.

As the threat landscape changes, the ability to address the most common types of security vulnerabilities is vital for robust protection. As information becomes the most essential asset for an organization, cybersecurity gains much more importance. To successfully conduct your business and preserve the hard-earned reputation of your company, you need to protect your data from malicious attacks, data breaches and hackers. 

As if times haven’t been hard enough, businesses are dealing with new security threats while employees work from home and some have major issues with one of the most popular video conferencing platforms, Zoom.

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.