How to Choose the Right Vulnerability Management System for Your Organization

According to Rootshell Security, vulnerability management is the process of identifying, prioritizing and protecting against threats.

In this post, we’ll discuss how a vulnerability management system can help your organization protect against cyber-attacks. We’ll also cover the key features of vulnerability management systems and how they can benefit your organization.
 
So, if you’re not sure how to choose a vulnerability management system for your organization, read on.

Provision of Complete and Continuous Discovery

A complete vulnerability assessment is achieved by active scanning, passive monitoring and offline scanning via agents. The ideal system should provide a combination of the three types of monitoring to provide visibility at all contact points with the system.

At the minimum, go for a system with a network scanner for the corporate network, an agent for use with devices out of the network and a passive network monitor to discover rogue assets and other vulnerabilities hidden among other assets.

In the era of cloud computing, it is important to know if there are cloud scanners or connectors and if the software works on both on-premises and cloud-based deployments. In the same breath,check if there are cloud integrations and visibility on Azure, AWS and related environments. Finally, it should also cover web applications, media brought from the outside and any third-party tools that access the company network.

Advanced Threat Prioritisation

With tons of possible threats, the ideal system should prioritise resources on vulnerabilities that present imminent threats for critical assets in the business. While the passive monitors continue to check threats in the background, a system that prioritizes issues can provide actionable data and information on the most-likely threats for action. It also scores vulnerabilities according to the likelihood of occurrence and the extent of the damage.

Such vulnerability management solutions leverage machine learning. They can spot data patterns that correlate with a threat activity in the future. This helps the software predict where threats are likely to occur and focus the resources on those areas.

The use of big data means that the company does not have to experience a threat to use the data in the future. It can use data that is already available to get an accurate prediction.

Flexibility and Automation

The vulnerabilities that businesses face differ from one organisation to another. Therefore, no standard meet all the business needs. Ideally, you should go for a vulnerability management solution that enables you to customise it to your needs.

In the same line, it should offer you various methods to visualise your data and share the findings with the relevant teams. You can visualize the data with graphs, spreadsheets and animated maps, among others.
 
In the same breath, it should automate the scanning and reporting process in line with your needs so that there are no time lags between detecting and reporting threats.

In other cases, it should integrate with remediation processes to deal with less harmful threats automatically or provide the first line of defence before any security teams can intervene. This step ensures that you are well covered even when IT teams are not in the office.

Vulnerability Management System Licensing and Pricing

Software licensing is a headache to most organisations. You may find different licenses to use such features as the API, deploying scanners across various environments and increasing the number of devices that require agents.

Ideally, the pricing should be straightforward. The vulnerability management tool should provide core features with the base pricing and a specific price for each additional feature you may need for your business.

 When comparing prices look for the following:

• How many agents and scanners can you use with the base price?
• What is the cost of additional agents and scanners?
• What is the cost of using the API?
• Does the tool offer threat-centric prioritisation? Does it come at a price?
• Does the vulnerability management solution come with a free trial.

Your business needs to always check its environment for security threats to apply the required security tools. The ideal vulnerability management program should offer quality, risk-based vulnerability scanning that prioritises the organisation’s most likely threats.

It should also be accurate, quick and easy to customise according to the organisation’s needs. This way, you are assured of enhanced safety and preparedness for possible risks in the future.