Create the best vulnerability management strategy for your network

Cybersecurity was a luxury once, but it is not anymore. The need for security over your network devices has become a necessity and organizations should make it a priority over other IT routine. Cyberattacks have doubled since the pandemic and it is only rising from there, attacks on healthcare organizations, financial institutions, federal entities and NGO’s, all prove that the attackers are motivated for monetary, political and social benefits.

Attacks usually began with phishing campaigns, but it is further elevated when the threat actors exploit a vulnerability for further infiltration. As per the IBM report, data breach costs have increased from $3.86 million to $4.24 million in 2021, and is considered to be the highest in the past 17 years.

And, this is why organizations will need the best vulnerability management strategy to secure their network and devices from evolving cyber threats. In this article, we will see how organizations and IT teams can build an effective cybersecurity posture for this year.

Coin your best vulnerability management strategy

The vulnerability management strategy is composed of six stages, that comes with several challenges needing to be addressed individually.

Asset Inventory

Identifying the devices existing within your network is the first stage in your vulnerability management strategy. Only when the devices and their applications are regularly recorded, so you will be notified if there is a security concern on managed assets.

Since employees are now working from a hybrid work culture, devices could be in a office or home network and these devices need to be equipped with the right patches, security configuration and authentication to ensure the best security is in place. The asset inventory will also assist in software deployment, their versions, devices that have them installed and collect those reports for your record periodically.

Information management

Organization is composed of several forms of data and each of them has to be equipped and protected with the best security posture. This can be achieved by deploying a special team that will handle Data and Information Security Management to ensure proper security configurations, policies, and security protocols are always in place.

Furthermore, formulating an incident response team to handle a security incident and identify a breach attempt can improve the overall security of the company eventually. While malware, ransomware, and other threats could impact organizations, effective information management can reduce your chances of becoming a victim to them.

Risk assessment

Organizations are usually composed of different types of network components, endpoints, operating systems and third-party applications, managing their security posture and vulnerabilities is not a humungous task if the IT department can prioritize their risks, vulnerabilities and preferences.

If the vulnerabilities can be classified as critical, moderate and low-risk, and the devices can also be mapped as the same then the individuals handling the risk assessment will know which devices and applications should be prioritized when there is a vulnerability or misconfiguration in place.

Vulnerability assessment

Vulnerability assessment follows risk assessment closely, and the previous stage is improvised with ethical hacking and penetration testing to identify the faulty and vulnerable devices/programs in your network. This includes servers, routers, switches, desktops, laptops, mobile devices, VMs, hypervisors, RDP services, and more.

The vulnerability assessment team needs to be updated on the CVE database and also subscribe to one, to be on top of their security news and patch critical vulnerabilities then and there. Zero-days are usually challenging and have to be managed in a unique way with some work around until the patches are made available.

Reporting

IT departments need to collect cumulative reports of existing vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, outdated hardware, firmware, software, BIOS details and more to ensure their actions are always monitored, recorded and reviewed. Proper documentation will also facilitate more than one individual or team to study the actions and do their best when a new employee joins the team.

Response planning

While organizations have prepared well in the previous stages, the last stage of incident response planning and implementation plays the vital role or a climax to the overall vulnerability management strategy. While prevention is important the response to a cyber incident is equally crucial as it will only help the organizations to re-stabilize their affected environment with right steps.

A proper incident response plan to validate the attack, analyzing the situation, isolating the affected devices, communicating internally and externally including employees, stakeholders, law enforcement, data protection authorities, clients and others followed by restoring systems and backing up data from offsite locations is key to successful vulnerability management strategy.

This year lets build the best vulnerability management strategy by following the above stages in the life cycle of vulnerability management and ensure your stakeholders and network is safe from the nefarious threat actors and their attacks.

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