What is Vulnerability Management?

I get asked frequently what businesses can do to prevent cyber crime, the first and best thing most companies can do is achieve Cyber Essentials, which you can read more about here. But then what? What's the next step and how do you grow your cyber security programme to ensure you stay protected? There are many options out there, but from a cost v benefit standpoint, vulnerability management is the natural progression to add to your security baseline.

What is Vulnerability Management?

Think of vulnerability management as preventative maintenance for your IT systems. Just as you'd service your car to prevent breakdowns, vulnerability management helps you identify and fix security issues before they lead to a breach. By looking for and identifying security issues regularly you can get ahead of many of the common attacks, find misconfigurations before they become a problem and limit your exposure to emerging threats

In practice, it's a structured approach that includes:

  • Discovery: Regularly scanning your IT environment (servers, workstations, network equipment, cloud services, applications) to identify known vulnerabilities.
  • Assessment: Evaluating which vulnerabilities pose the greatest risk to your specific business, considering factors like how easy they are to exploit and potential impact if exploited.
  • Remediation: Creating a plan to prioritise the issues found and applying patches, configuration changes, or other fixes to address them.
  • Verification: Confirming that remediation efforts worked.
  • Reporting: Regular review of the results of the vulnerability management programme, how amy problems have been found, how many have been fixed and what new issues have been identified since the last scan.

The key difference between vulnerability management and a one-time security assessment is consistency. Vulnerabilities are constantly being discovered in software and systems, so this needs to be an ongoing process rather than a one-off project.

Why Vulnerability Management Matters

There's a saying in cybersecurity: "Attackers only need to be right once, but defenders need to be right every time." Here's why establishing a vulnerability management programme makes business sense:

  • Preventing breaches before they happen: Most cyberattacks exploit known vulnerabilities that could have been patched. The 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack that affected the NHS and countless other organisations exploited a vulnerability that had a patch available months before the attack.
  • Prioritising your efforts efficiently: Not all vulnerabilities are created equal. A good vulnerability management process helps you focus your limited resources on fixing the issues that pose the greatest risk to your specific business.
  • Meeting insurance requirements: Many cyber insurance policies now require proof of vulnerability management. Without it, you might find your claims denied if you suffer a breach.
  • Demonstrating due diligence: Should the worst happen, being able to show that you had a reasonable process in place to manage vulnerabilities can be crucial in regulatory investigations or legal proceedings.
  • Reducing firefighting: Without proactive vulnerability management, IT teams often find themselves constantly responding to security incidents rather than preventing them – a stressful and inefficient approach.
  • Improving business confidence: When you know your systems are regularly checked and maintained, you can focus on business growth rather than worrying about potential security issues.

How We Can Help

There's a saying in cybersecurity: "Attackers only need to be right once, but defenders need to be right every time." Here's why establishing a vulnerability management programme makes business sense:

  • Preventing breaches before they happen: Most cyberattacks exploit known vulnerabilities that could have been patched. The 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack that affected the NHS and countless other organisations exploited a vulnerability that had a patch available months before the attack.
  • Prioritising your efforts efficiently: Not all vulnerabilities are created equal. A good vulnerability management process helps you focus your limited resources on fixing the issues that pose the greatest risk to your specific business.
  • Meeting insurance requirements: Many cyber insurance policies now require proof of vulnerability management. Without it, you might find your claims denied if you suffer a breach.
  • Demonstrating due diligence: Should the worst happen, being able to show that you had a reasonable process in place to manage vulnerabilities can be crucial in regulatory investigations or legal proceedings.
  • Reducing firefighting: Without proactive vulnerability management, IT teams often find themselves constantly responding to security incidents rather than preventing them – a stressful and inefficient approach.
  • Improving business confidence: When you know your systems are regularly checked and maintained, you can focus on business growth rather than worrying about potential security issues.

Vulnerability management doesn't need to be complicated or expensive, but it is an essential component of modern cybersecurity. If you're interested in learning how a tailored approach might work for your organisation, we're always happy to chat about practical solutions that could help protect your business from today's evolving threats. Get in touch whenever you're ready.