The aftermath of the pandemic has left security teams and CISOs with a number of new security challenges to address. Closing security holes in critical infrastructure and patching vulnerabilities as required, are among the most important of these responsibilities.
Security vulnerabilities are skyrocketing and security experts are expected to meet the increasing demands associated with remediating high-risk vulnerabilities in order to prevent their organization from being targeted.
Security teams should use risk-based vulnerability management (RBVM) strategy to promote business enablement while lowering the overall risk posture to relieve the burden and improve productivity and pace of remediation.
Here are some practical ways to leverage threat intelligence to prioritize vulnerability and address the CVE chaos.
Understand the difference between vulnerability and risk
To make RBVM more understandable, organizations must understand the key differences between risk and vulnerability. To begin, vulnerabilities are the gaps or weaknesses that threaten an organization’s IT security efforts which may or may never be exploited, whereas a risk is a calculated assessment of the possible danger to an organization’s network security vulnerabilities. As there are a lot of vulnerabilities to address, and insufficient resources to address them all, businesses must come up with better ways than CVEs and prioritize remediation based on risk to protect what really matters.
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CVSS numbers do not tell the whole story
When it comes to vulnerability prioritization, businesses seem to be focusing on CVSS scores that help them determine the characteristics and seriousness of the most crucial vulnerabilities to address. However, as the modern hacker has evolved, this method has proven to be obsolete. Attackers are unconcerned about the severity scoring of vulnerability and tend to gravitate to the simplest point of entry in order to exploit a system’s weaknesses. Therefore, security teams should leverage threat intelligence to assess the likelihood of a vulnerability getting exploited.
Refrain from drowning in a game of numbers
Security experts are constantly playing catch-up, responding to events, and extinguishing fires across the network. Due to a large number of vulnerabilities and patches that must be applied, fighting in the trenches can be a grueling experience. Prioritizing vulnerabilities using risk-based scoring relieves the pressure by focusing remediation efforts on the vulnerabilities that are most likely to be exploited.
Customize the company’s risk tolerance
Risk scores address the most difficult problem of security professionals– deciding what to prioritize. The likelihood of a vulnerability being exploited is calculated using the score assigned to it. This is due to the fact that several NIST vulnerabilities remain unexploited. Thus, focusing on the likelihood provided by the risk score, businesses can identify risk levels in real-time based on data algorithms that take care of actual hacker behavior. Moreover, with the help of such evidence-based risk scoring and depending on the risk appetite of the company and business criticality, businesses can decide to be either aggressive or careful with remediation.
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Keep an eye on cyber-criminals
Often, security teams are given a single goal: to assist in the adoption of new technology while minimizing the risk to the organization. Without the help of automation and predictive technology, a simple task becomes a very difficult task to master. Security teams will have the required proof to make more intelligent decisions and rectify flaws quicker before a hacker identifies and exploits a weakness only if they use intelligence-led risk-based strategies. These will be beneficial in the cybersecurity battle and will certainly save the company from millions of dollars in fines and damages.
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