What is Vulnerability Management Lifecycle ? Protect Your Assets Today

Most security professionals deal with two main issues. On one hand, there is an increasing attack surface. According to a report by JupiterOne, modern security teams are responsible for 165000 cyber assets including devices, applications, cloud workloads etc. On the other hand, there are visibility challenges. A report by Gartner states that less than 1% of companies have more than 95% visibility into their assets. This underscores the importance of having a vulnerability management lifecycle in place to develop a continuous vulnerability detection and redressal approach.

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure (CVE), a system established to disclose vulnerabilities publicly identified a staggering 25000 vulnerabilities in 2022. That number has since been long surpassed in 2023. An effective vulnerability management program can minimize the risks caused by this ongoing influx of vulnerabilities and can provide organizations protection against the evolving threat landscape.

This blog guides you on the phases of the vulnerability management lifecycle and helps you prepare a structured system to manage critical vulnerabilities and fortify your organization’s defences.

What is a vulnerability management lifecycle?

Vulnerability management lifecycle is a systematic process of discovering, analyzing, prioritizing, and mitigating vulnerabilities in an organization’s systems and software for continuous improvement. It helps detect and report security weaknesses continuously for patch applications and protecting against cyber threats.

Importance of vulnerability management lifecycle

A vulnerability management lifecycle is crucial for an organization to understand security maturity and posture within the threat landscape. Consistently identifying and managing vulnerabilities on an ongoing basis helps reduce risk exposure, builds a robust security stance, and safeguards the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive information assets. 

These are the benefits of the vulnerability management lifecycle:

Proactive defense mechanism

Vulnerability management continuously discovers and remediates new vulnerabilities that malicious actors can exploit. The structured and iterative approach makes the organization vigilant and proactive in defending against emerging security threats.

Compliance management

Vulnerability management is a mandatory component under several regulatory standards such as ISO 27001 and PCI DSS and helps safeguard sensitive information. An efficient vulnerability management lifecycle can protect organizations from non-compliance penalties, fines, scrutiny, and reputational damage.

Want to automate your way to compliance? Leverage the top rated compliance automation tool.

Enhanced incident response

The streamlined process enables timely identification of security weaknesses and reduces the impact of incidents. It also helps improve and strengthen the incident response plan by providing comprehensive visibility across newly discovered threats.

Security conscious culture

The vulnerability management lifecycle process ingrains a culture of risk awareness, watchfulness, responsibility, and continuous improvement. It makes the employees more conscious of the consequences and encourages them to take ownership in identifying, addressing, and reporting vulnerabilities.

Want to keep your business safe and sound? Grab our “Vulnerability Management Policy Template” now. It’s packed with everything you need to tackle vulnerabilities.

Stages in vulnerability management lifecycle

The lifecycle of vulnerability management is a phased approach to handle vulnerabilities more efficiently and with the right distribution of resources. These vulnerabilities are identified through various means, assessed for ease of exploitation, and systematically managed to reduce risk. 

Here are 6 stages of the vulnerability management lifecycle:

Stage 1: Asset discovery and prioritization

Create an inventory of different asset types to understand what needs to be assessed. You can classify these assets to prevent oversights.

Physical assets

• Network devices such as routers, firewalls, switches etc.
• End-user devices such as computers, laptops, mobiles
• Servers (physical)

Digital assets

• Operating systems
• Virtual servers
• Production Software
• Web applications
• SaaS apps etc.

Information assets

• Customer data
• Financial information
• Business critical information etc.

Also check: Vulnerability Scanning Tools: Key Features to Look For

Other assets

This can include operational assets such as backup storage, active directory systems, internet-facing assets, or any other assets depending on the organization’s infrastructure.

How to discover these assets?

You can use a combination of methods for comprehensive coverage. These can be network scanning tools, endpoint detection systems, asset inventory tools, IoT device scanning etc. There is also agent-based discovery where software deployed as agents with devices facilitates asset discovery. For example, a cloud agent may be deployed on a virtual machine to provide details on cloud assets.

How to prioritize assets?

It is crucial to set scanning priorities and identify vulnerabilities for critical assets first as they have the maximum impact. You may consider factors such as criticality to business operations, assets storing sensitive information, external-facing assets, assets that fall under regulatory compliance, assets with more user accessibility, and other considerations. This should be a dynamic process based on evolving threats and the digital landscape.

Stage 2: Vulnerability assessment

You can use automated vulnerability scanners, manual testing, and penetration testing to identify potential vulnerabilities in systems.

 Different types of vulnerability scanners can help you with the following:

• Web application scanning to identify vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting, SQL injections, cross-site request forgery etc.
• Network scanning to spot open ports and services, weak credentials, Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerabilities, wireless network security weaknesses etc.
• Operating system scans to highlight any privilege escalation, security misconfigurations, insecure file permissions etc.
• Database scans to pinpoint any missing patches, sensitive information exposure, insecure session handling, unauthorized access etc.
• Endpoint security assessments to detect malware, authorization issues etc.
  And more.

Understanding the associated challenge:

Network or application-based scanners may not be able to provide comprehensive coverage if there are complex interconnected environments or any access or segmentation issues. Deploying agents for all devices can be expensive for organizations. Organizations can choose a combination of in-depth and budget-friendly analysis methods and decide based on specific needs.

Vulnerability management tool recommendations:

Nessus, BurpSuite, Qualys and Nmap.

How Sprinto can help here:

If you are in a regulated industry and looking to ace both security and compliance, Sprinto can help. 

Sprinto, as a compliance automation tool automates and streamlines compliance while helping you achieve >90% compliance. It integrates with vulnerability scanners like Dependabot and SL scan and enables you to upload VAPT reports to manage them centrally. You can track and manage these vulnerabilities till closure and get automated alerts for any misses. Additionally, you can put other compliance areas on autopilot and get audit-ready in weeks. Click here to speak to a compliance expert.

Stage 3: Vulnerability prioritization

For the prioritization stage, you can use a combination of the following:

• Use a CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) score to rank vulnerabilities based on severity. Various tools support this score and generate numerical values from 0 to 10, with 10 being the most severe vulnerability. The CVSS takes several factors, such as attack vectors, attack complexity, privileges etc., into consideration before generating the score.
• Conduct a risk assessment to understand the impact and likelihood of vulnerability exploitation.
• Prioritize vulnerabilities for critical and internet-facing assets
• Address vulnerabilities that can lead to serious non-compliance ramifications
• Gather threat intelligence from internal and external sources for additional threat context to prioritize vulnerabilities.

Prioritization will help focus efforts on high-impact areas and reduce the overall attack surface.

Stage 4: Reporting

The next step is compiling this data for reporting and documentation to present to key stakeholders. The vulnerability assessment report contains an executive summary for review by management and non-technical stakeholders. It includes details on vulnerabilities discovered and the tests performed with all technical details for security teams. Compliance teams utilize the risk assessments to plan any compliance remediation efforts.

If you want more details on how to write a VAPT report, click here.

Stage 5: Remediation

The remediation process is the implementation of an action plan to eliminate the identified vulnerabilities. This requires the creation or updation of policies, the establishment of roles, and the communication of responsibilities.

Low-risk vulnerabilities are usually accepted or deprioritized. For others, there are workarounds and mitigation plans. These measures include applying patches provided by software vendors, making configuration changes, implementing any compensating controls etc.

Stage 6: Monitoring for verification

Conduct thorough testing and follow-ups after implementing remediation measures to ensure they work as intended. You can conduct a re-scan to check if any vulnerabilities are left unaddressed or if certain vulnerabilities have re-emerged. This is an ongoing process to facilitate continuous improvement.

Vulnerability management best practices

Vulnerability management practices help integrate the process into cybersecurity initiatives and derive more return from the investment by fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Meticulously adopting these best practices can build a culture of collaboration and resilience and safeguard critical assets from evolving threats.

Check out these vulnerability management best practices for effective vulnerability management:

• Maintain an up-to-date inventory of assets to ensure no vulnerability oversights lead to catastrophic results
• Conduct frequent vulnerability scans. Most security professionals advise monthly or quarterly vulnerability scans depending on the complexity of IT infrastructure and the business size
• Establish a streamlined patch management process and regularly follow up with vendors for security patches to reduce exposure and attack surface
• Arrange for frequent security training to empower teams to stay ahead of vulnerabilities
• Incorporate vendor security assessments as a part of the vulnerability management process to minimize third-party risks
• Regularly update policies based on information from threat intelligence sources and communicate the changes to key stakeholders
• Leverage automated tools to reduce manual overload and human error.

Manage vulnerabilities and compliance with Sprinto

As our dependencies on interconnected environments increase, there are greater security loopholes for attackers to exploit. These could be default settings, weak access policies, unencrypted files and more. Having a proper vulnerability management life cycle in place is, therefore, a strategic imperative to safeguard against operational disruptions and maintain a competitive edge. However, security risks are not managed only by managing vulnerabilities. It is equally crucial to meet regulatory requirements. 

This is where tools like Sprinto come into the picture to help you manage both security and compliance. Sprinto can help you with vulnerability and incident management and raise automated alerts for any security or compliance drifts. It can automate the assessment of controls and incorporate workflows to address vulnerabilities and compliance gaps efficiently. 

Sprinto supports over 15+ security frameworks and regulations, allowing you to unlock better business prospects with compliance confidence and enhanced security.

See Sprinto in action. Speak to a compliance expert.

FAQs

Can vulnerability scanners detect zero-day exploits?

More often than not, vulnerability scanners are configured to detect known vulnerabilities. Zero-day exploits are unknown and require advanced behavior-based detection or manual tests.

What are some challenges in vulnerability management?

Some challenges in vulnerability management include a lack of resources, incomplete inventory of assets, inaccurate or conflicting prioritization, and managing a huge number of vulnerabilities. The best way to solve these is to opt for automated tools and put things on autopilot while focusing on mission-critical areas.

Are open