09 Sep 2024

5 Steps to Implement Vulnerability Management into your Business

When operating in the modern era of the digital landscape, we are now more reliant than ever on technology, which is great - until a cyber criminal exposes your IT infrastructure. Vulnerability management is integral to safeguarding your organisation against cyber threats. Within our blog post, we aim to give you an overview of vulnerability management, its importance, and ways to implement an effective program into your business.

What is Vulnerability Management:

Vulnerability management refers to the process of recognising, evaluating, documenting, addressing and reporting cyber vulnerabilities within your IT infrastructure. This approach should be continuous as vulnerabilities are always developing across your organisation, only updating this once a year is not enough in current times. The process of vulnerability management includes the following:

1. Recognising: This process involves conducting a thorough examination of your infrastructure to identify and assess any potential vulnerabilities.
2. Evaluation: Making a judgement on the severity and potential implications of the vulnerabilities located.
3. Documenting: Ensuring to record all vulnerabilities once evaluated to have historical documents which will be referred back to later.
4. Addressing: This involves taking action against the vulnerabilities recorded and fixing/mitigating the risks.
5. Reporting: Returning to your documentation and reporting on actions taken, and the current state of the vulnerability.

When evaluating the severity of a risk, we rely on the 'Common Vulnerability Scoring System' (CVSS).

• This system ranks the associated vulnerability on a scale of 0-10.
• A score of 0 represents the lowest level of severity, while a score of 10 signifies a critical vulnerability.

Each stage within the process is paramount to safeguarding your organisation's vulnerability, but why is this important?

Why is Vulnerability Management Valuable?

Protecting Sensitive Data:

Failure to react to vulnerabilities can cause weaknesses within your infrastructure which can be exposed by cyber criminals. As such, hackers are able to gain unauthorised access to sensitive information, potentially causing data breaches and financial losses. Due to strict data protection regulations, failure to provide adequate security for your customer's data can lead to extensive fines from the ICO.

Reducing the Risk of Cyber Attacks:

By consistently reviewing and identifying your organisation's vulnerabilities, and then taking steps to address them, you can significantly minimise the risks posed by cyber threats to your company. Proactively addressing vulnerabilities helps decrease the chances of your business becoming a victim of cyber crime.

ISO 27001 Accreditation:

Vulnerability management is a critical component when aiming to achieve the ISO (International Standard for Organisations) 27001 accreditation which correlates to information security management systems (ISMS). To earn this accreditation, organisations must demonstrate their capability to identify, assess, prioritise, and address vulnerabilities within their information systems.

5 Steps to Implement Vulnerability Management in your business:

Establish a Baseline:

To begin you will need to start by conducting a comprehensive assessment of your IT infrastructure to gain a base-level understanding.

Regularly Scan for Vulnerabilities:

Using automated tools is the most efficient way to scan your network for vulnerabilities, these tools will help you identify vulnerabilities quickly and efficiently. Speak to our team about automating your vulnerability management.

Prioritise on Vulnerabilities:

Depending on the vulnerability, there will be different levels of threats to your organisation. It is essential to prioritise addressing those that pose the greatest threat to your business to mitigate the risks.

Remediate Vulnerabilities:

This is when you develop a plan to address the vulnerabilities you have identified in the previous stages, focusing on the prioritised vulnerabilities first. Once your plan is created, you act on the vulnerabilities and start mitigating your business’s risks.

Monitor and Report:

To stay updated on your company's vulnerabilities, you must continuously review your IT infrastructure and maintain detailed records of new/old vulnerabilities. Regularly report on changes and actions taken within the landscape to relevant stakeholders.

How ITRM can help:

Monitoring your IT environment’s vulnerabilities can be a complex, time-consuming task that requires a lot of attention to detail. Outsourcing vulnerability management to an MSP can save you time, protect customers' data, and comply with regulations, whilst maintaining your organisation's security. If you would like to learn more about how we can help your company with vulnerability management, speak to our team below: