5 reasons to upgrade to risk-based vulnerability management

Vulnerability management solutions were not designed to manage the modern attack surface, nor the growing number of threats connected to such surface. Furthermore, said solutions are limited to a theoretical view of the risk connected with a vulnerability and such circumstance has led security teams to waste time investigating the wrong problems and overlooking many of the most critical vulnerabilities. 

On the other hand, by adopting a risk-based vulnerability management approach, security teams can focus on the vulnerabilities and the most valuable assets, and may de-prioritize, at the same time, those vulnerabilities that are likely never to explode. 

1. Make decisions considering the entire context. 

In order to understand the actual risk connected with each vulnerability, you should correlate and analyze the essential characteristics of the vulnerability, along with other key elements of the context, including criticalities of the affected assets, threat and exploit intelligence, and the assessment of current and likely future attackers’ activity. 

2. Focus first on what matters most. 

You should understand all the vulnerabilities within the risk context, in order to use the collected data and prioritize remediation efforts. By this way you may overcome the problems arising from the use of CVSS score in an isolated manner. However, you should address the actual risk and not waste valuable time on vulnerabilities that have low probability of exploitation. As a result of that, you will maximize team efficiency by proactively reducing the most risks with lower effort. 

3. Eliminate blind spots. 

You should analyze modern assets, as well as local traditional IT environments in order to eliminate blind spots. This will allow you to gain visibility into the entire attack surface and determine the vulnerabilities to be corrected with priority on the basis of the risk, no matter where they are located on the network. 

4. Be determined and strategic. 

You should continuously detect and analyze the risk associated with all critical assets along the attack surface, and use analytics which dynamically assess changes in asset criticality, threat, and vulnerability data. By limiting the analysis to audited assets, critical systems may be bypassed, and point-in-time and static analysts commonly generating late and incomplete fixes or mindless work that does not reduce risks. 

5. Minimize interruptions. 

In order to accurately measure the risk, you should take advantage of learning models to continuously automate and combine vulnerability data with exploit and threat intelligence, as well as asset criticalities,. This knowledge will allow you to adjust the correction strategy in near real time. You should proactively address the vulnerabilities that represent the greatest risk, while minimizing disruptions from new vulnerabilities and zero-day exploits. 

Ikusi’s wasp solution has a risk-based approach, which allows you to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of remediation efforts and will allow you to make the best use of your limited security resources from any geographic location. Activate it for free here.