What is the vulnerability management lifecycle?

Each month, the Nationwide Institute of Requirements and Expertise (NIST) provides over 2,000 new safety vulnerabilities to the National Vulnerability Database. Safety groups don’t want to trace all of those vulnerabilities, however they do want a method to establish and resolve those that pose a possible menace to their techniques. That’s what the vulnerability management lifecycle is for.

The vulnerability administration lifecycle is a steady course of for locating, prioritizing and addressing vulnerabilities in an organization’s IT belongings.

A typical spherical of the lifecycle has 5 levels:

1. Asset stock and vulnerability evaluation. 
2. Vulnerability prioritization.
3. Vulnerability decision.
4. Verification and monitoring.
5. Reporting and enchancment.

The vulnerability administration lifecycle permits organizations to enhance safety posture by taking a extra strategic method to vulnerability administration. As a substitute of reacting to new vulnerabilities as they seem, safety groups actively hunt for flaws of their techniques. Organizations can establish probably the most vital vulnerabilities and put protections in place earlier than menace actors strike.

Why does the vulnerability administration lifecycle matter?

A vulnerability is any safety weak spot within the construction, operate or implementation of a community or asset that hackers can exploit to hurt an organization. 

Vulnerabilities can come up from elementary flaws in an asset’s building. Such was the case with the notorious Log4J vulnerability, the place coding errors in a well-liked Java library allowed hackers to remotely run malware on victims’ computer systems. Different vulnerabilities are brought on by human error, like a misconfigured cloud storage bucket that exposes delicate information to the general public web.

Each vulnerability is a threat for organizations. In response to IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, vulnerability exploitation is the second commonest cyberattack vector. X-Pressure additionally discovered that the variety of new vulnerabilities will increase yearly, with 23,964 recorded in 2022 alone.

Hackers have a rising stockpile of vulnerabilities at their disposal. In response, enterprises have made vulnerability administration a key part of their cyber risk management methods. The vulnerability administration lifecycle presents a proper mannequin for efficient vulnerability administration applications in an ever-changing cyberthreat panorama.  By adopting the lifecycle, organizations can see among the following advantages:

• Proactive vulnerability discovery and determination: Companies usually don’t learn about their vulnerabilities till hackers have exploited them. The vulnerability administration lifecycle is constructed round steady monitoring so safety groups can discover vulnerabilities earlier than adversaries do.
• Strategic useful resource allocation: Tens of hundreds of latest vulnerabilities are found yearly, however only some are related to a company. The vulnerability administration lifecycle helps enterprises pinpoint probably the most vital vulnerabilities of their networks and prioritize the most important dangers for remediation.
• A extra constant vulnerability administration course of: The vulnerability administration lifecycle provides safety groups a repeatable course of to observe, from vulnerability discovery to remediation and past. A extra constant course of produces extra constant outcomes, and it allows firms to automate key workflows like asset stock, vulnerability evaluation and patch management.

Phases of the vulnerability administration lifecycle

New vulnerabilities can come up in a community at any time, so the vulnerability administration lifecycle is a steady loop fairly than a collection of distinct occasions. Every spherical of the lifecycle feeds immediately into the following. A single spherical normally accommodates the next levels: 

Stage 0: Planning and prework

Technically, planning and prework occur earlier than the vulnerability administration lifecycle, therefore the “Stage 0” designation. Throughout this stage, the group irons out vital particulars of the vulnerability administration course of, together with the next:

• Which stakeholders can be concerned, and the roles they may have
• Sources—together with folks, instruments, and funding—out there for vulnerability administration
• Basic tips for prioritizing and responding to vulnerabilities
• Metrics for measuring this system’s success

Organizations don’t undergo this stage earlier than each spherical of the lifecycle. Typically, an organization conducts an in depth planning and prework part earlier than it launches a proper vulnerability administration program. When a program is in place, stakeholders periodically revisit planning and prework to replace their general tips and techniques as wanted. 

Stage 1: Asset discovery and vulnerability evaluation

The formal vulnerability administration lifecycle begins with an asset stock—a catalog of all of the {hardware} and software program on the group’s community. The stock consists of formally sanctioned apps and endpoints and any shadow IT belongings staff use with out approval. 

As a result of new belongings are repeatedly added to firm networks, the asset stock is up to date earlier than each spherical of the lifecycle. Corporations usually use software program instruments like attack surface management platforms to automate their inventories.  

After figuring out belongings, the safety staff assesses them for vulnerabilities. The staff can use a mixture of instruments and strategies, together with automated vulnerability scanners, guide penetration testing and exterior threat intelligence from the cybersecurity neighborhood.

Assessing each asset throughout each spherical of the lifecycle could be onerous, so safety groups normally work in batches. Every spherical of the lifecycle focuses on a selected group of belongings, with extra vital asset teams receiving scans extra usually. Some superior vulnerability scanning instruments repeatedly assess all community belongings in real-time, enabling the safety staff to take an much more dynamic method to vulnerability discovery. 

Stage 2: Vulnerability prioritization

The safety staff prioritizes the vulnerabilities they discovered within the evaluation stage. Prioritization ensures that the staff addresses probably the most vital vulnerabilities first. This stage additionally helps the staff keep away from pouring time and sources into low-risk vulnerabilities. 

To prioritize vulnerabilities, the staff considers these standards:

• Criticality rankings from exterior menace intelligence: This may embrace MITRE’s record of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) or the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
• Asset criticality: A noncritical vulnerability in a vital asset usually receives increased precedence than a vital vulnerability in a much less essential asset. 
• Potential affect: The safety staff weighs what may occur if hackers exploited a specific vulnerability, together with the consequences on enterprise operations, monetary losses and any risk of authorized motion.
• Chance of exploitation: The safety staff pays extra consideration to vulnerabilities with recognized exploits that hackers actively use within the wild.
• False positives: The safety staff ensures that vulnerabilities truly exist earlier than dedicating any sources to them. 

Stage 3: Vulnerability decision

The safety staff works by the record of prioritized vulnerabilities, from most crucial to least vital. Organizations have three choices to handle vulnerabilities:

1. Remediation: Totally addressing a vulnerability so it may possibly not be exploited, equivalent to by patching an working system bug, fixing a misconfiguration or eradicating a susceptible asset from the community. Remediation isn’t at all times possible. For some vulnerabilities, full fixes aren’t out there on the time of discovery (e.g., zero-day vulnerabilities). For different vulnerabilities, remediation could be too resource-intensive.  
2. Mitigation: Making a vulnerability tougher to use or lessening the affect of exploitation with out eradicating the vulnerability solely. For instance, including stricter authentication and authorization measures to an online utility would make it tougher for hackers to hijack accounts. Crafting incident response plans for recognized vulnerabilities can soften the blow of cyberattacks. Safety groups normally select to mitigate when remediation is unimaginable or prohibitively costly. 
3. Acceptance: Some vulnerabilities are so low-impact or unlikely to be exploited that fixing them wouldn’t be cost-effective. In these instances, the group can select to simply accept the vulnerability. 

Stage 4: Verification and monitoring

To confirm that mitigation and remediation efforts labored as supposed, the safety staff rescans and retests the belongings they only labored on. These audits have two main functions: to find out if the safety staff efficiently addressed all recognized vulnerabilities and be certain that mitigation and remediation didn’t introduce any new issues.

As a part of this reassessment stage, the safety staff additionally screens the community extra broadly. The staff appears to be like for any new vulnerabilities for the reason that final scan, outdated mitigations which have grown out of date, or different modifications which will require motion. All of those findings assist inform the following spherical of the lifecycle.

Stage 5: Reporting and enchancment

The safety staff paperwork exercise from the latest spherical of the lifecycle, together with vulnerabilities discovered, decision steps taken and outcomes. These experiences are shared with related stakeholders, together with executives, asset house owners, compliance departments and others. 

The safety staff additionally displays on how the latest spherical of the lifecycle went. The staff could have a look at key metrics like imply time to detect (MTTD), imply time to reply (MTTR), whole variety of vital vulnerabilities and vulnerability recurrence charges. By monitoring these metrics over time, the safety staff can set up a baseline for the vulnerability administration program’s efficiency and establish alternatives to enhance this system over time. Classes realized from one spherical of the lifecycle could make the following spherical simpler.

Discover vulnerability administration options

Vulnerability administration is a fancy enterprise. Even with a proper lifecycle, safety groups may really feel like they’re trying to find needles in haystacks as they attempt to monitor down vulnerabilities in large company networks. 

IBM X-Pressure® Pink may also help streamline the method. The X-Pressure® Pink staff presents complete vulnerability management services, working with organizations to establish vital belongings, uncover high-risk vulnerabilities, totally remediate weaknesses and apply efficient countermeasures.

Learn more about IBM X-Force® Red vulnerability management services

IBM Safety® QRadar® Suite can additional assist resource-strained safety groups with a modernized menace detection and response answer. QRadar Suite integrates endpoint safety, log administration, SIEM and SOAR merchandise inside a typical consumer interface, and embeds enterprise automation and AI to assist safety analysts enhance productiveness and work extra successfully throughout applied sciences.

Explore IBM Security QRadar Suite