Information Security Vulnerability Management: Step-by-Step Guide

Information security vulnerability management (ISVM) helps organizations protect sensitive data by identifying, analyzing, and remediating security vulnerabilities before attackers exploit them.

Undetected vulnerabilities, unpatched software, misconfiguration, weak passwords, and authentication issues lure attackers. They exploit these weaknesses to launch cyber attacks that steal sensitive data and damage your organization’s reputation and finances.

Information security vulnerability management allows organizations to continuously monitor IT assets, find and prioritize risks based on impact, and implement security measures on time. This strengthens an organization’s security posture and maintains compliance with industry regulations.

In this article, we will discuss information security vulnerability management (ISVM), why you need it, key components, types of security vulnerabilities, step-by-step processes, how to create policies, challenges, and best practices.

What is Information Security Vulnerability Management?

Information Security Vulnerability Management (ISVM) is a process that an organization follows to protect its business and customer information from cyber threats. It also safeguards IT systems, such as on-premises computers, databases, IoT devices, endpoints, cloud applications, etc., that store and manage that information.

ISVM is a continuous process that involves various techniques, tools, and technologies to identify, analyze, prioritize, and resolve security vulnerabilities in IT systems. This helps you remove vulnerabilities, such as misconfigurations, weak authorization, and other errors from systems. This way, you can protect your business and customer data and prevent cyber criminals from exploiting vulnerabilities and turning them into data breaches, insider threats, unauthorized access, and other cyber threats.

Implementing ISVM reduces your organization’s attack surface with ongoing vulnerability scanning, risk assessments, and testing and eliminates them as soon as they appear. It helps improve your organization’s security posture, meet compliance, and minimize the impacts of attacks.

Need for Information Security Vulnerability Management

Many cybersecurity measures are reactive, which means they help you react or respond to cyber threats after they strike your organization. On the other hand, information security vulnerability management is a preventive measure that secures your IT assets before an attacker can exploit weaknesses.

Here are some reasons why you need to implement ISVM in your organization:

• Prevents attacks: Vulnerabilities in systems are the main entry points for attackers. If they are successful at finding those weak spots before you do, they won’t take long to exploit those weaknesses. As a result, you may face zero-day attacks, data breaches, ransomware attacks, unauthorized access to confidential data, and more.

Implementing modern security measures, such as ISVM solutions, and constantly looking for system vulnerabilities. It involves continuous monitoring, scanning, penetration testing, etc., to find weak spots. You can also prioritize those vulnerabilities based on their severity to resolve the most risky threats first. This helps prevent cyber attacks and protects your sensitive customer and business data.

• Meet compliance: Organizations, particularly those under heavily regulated industries, need to comply with various data privacy laws and regulations. Violations can bring in lawsuits, fines, and reputation damage.

ISVM’s focus is to protect customer and business data from cyber threats. It encourages you to adopt advanced security and data protection measures, such as strong authentication mechanisms, access controls, etc. This keeps you compliant with standards, such as GDPR, PCI DSS, HIPAA, etc., and saves your reputation.

• Improve security posture: Preventive security measures like ISVM strengthen your organization’s capability to find and fix security risks in real time. You can monitor your systems 24×7 to catch threats and neutralize them as soon as they pop up. Hardening system security helps reduce the attack surface and safeguards the data they store, manage, and process.

Additionally, ISVM promotes a culture of security in your organization and improves coordination between IT, compliance, security, and decision makers. All of this improves your organization’s security posture and makes it more resilient to threats.

• Minimize downtime: When operational downtimes happen, it directly affects your customers. You would not be able to process their requests or answer their queries on time. For example, if a customer is in dire need of your service, but it is unavailable, they may go to another provider. This way, you lose a customer and their trust in your brand as you could not entertain their request in need.

Implementing ISVM practices reduces the likelihood of cyber attacks that disrupt your operations. You can find and address vulnerabilities before an attacker exploits them. This prevents unplanned system outages due to attacks that eat up your network resources and add up costs. It also prevents the disturbances that come when you apply emergency fixes to cyber threats.

Types of Vulnerabilities in Information Security and Their Impact

Vulnerabilities are weaknesses in an application, system, or network device that cyber attackers can exploit. With cyber threats all around, securing systems and sensitive information should be every organization’s goal. Let us discuss the types of vulnerabilities you may find in information security:

Software Vulnerabilities

Software vulnerabilities are security flaws in operating systems, third-party libraries, and applications. These vulnerabilities arise because of poor software design, coding errors, and lack of security patches in software.

Common examples include:

• SQL injections: Attackers inject malicious SQL queries into your web applications to gain unauthorized database access and extract confidential user data, such as financial information or login credentials.

• Buffer overflow: When a program writes more data than expected to a memory buffer, attackers can overwrite adjacent memory, which leads to code execution or crashes.

• Remote code execution: Hackers exploit vulnerabilities to run malicious code on a target system remotely to disrupt the system’s functions. They often use this method to gain full control or install malware inside a compromised server.

These vulnerabilities could have the following impacts on your organization:

• Cybercriminals could gain unauthorized access to sensitive data.
• System downtime and operational disruptions could happen.
• Malware injections could compromise your systems.

Hardware Vulnerabilities

Hardware vulnerabilities exist in the chipset, processor, or firmware level that allow attackers to steal data easily. These kinds of vulnerabilities are often hard to patch. If cybercriminals exploit these vulnerabilities, they may get long-term access to system hardware.

Examples include:

• Rowhammer: A memory-based hardware attack that exploits a weakness in modern DRAM to flip bits in memory and gain control over a system.

• Meltdown and Spectre: These vulnerabilities allow attackers to access sensitive data stored in a device’s memory by exploiting weaknesses in CPU design. They are common in modern processors.

• Side-channel attacks: These attacks extract information based on indirect indicators, such as electromagnetic emissions, timing differences, or power consumption in cryptographic operations.

These vulnerabilities can have the following impact on your organization:

• Confidential data exposure, such as encryption keys, passwords, and other sensitive information, can happen.
• Hardware vulnerability may remain hidden for years, requiring you to replace this with new hardware.
• Industries such as healthcare and finance that manage sensitive data may face regulatory penalties.

Network Vulnerabilities

Network vulnerabilities are weaknesses that exist within your organization’s network infrastructure, including firewalls, VPNs, cloud-based services, and routers. Cybercriminals often target poor network security configurations, outdated protocols, and lack of encryption to enter network devices.

Some examples are:

• Outdated firewalls and VPNs: Misconfigured or outdated firewalls and VPNs allow attackers to bypass network security defenses and gain access.

• Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks: Attackers flood your network with excessive traffic that causes system crashes and disrupts business operations.

• Man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks: Cybercriminals intercept and manipulate communications between two parties to steal sensitive information and user credentials.

Network vulnerabilities can have the following impacts on your organization:

• Data interception and unauthorized access to network devices due to weak network security.
• Attacks, such as DDoS attacks, can take down your important business systems and cause financial losses.
• Implementing fixes after an attack could be very costly and disrupt operations.

Human-Related Vulnerabilities

Human error is one of the biggest security risks for an organization. Examples of human-related weaknesses are insider threats, poor security practices, etc. This could lead to attacks, such as data breaches, social engineering attacks, and more. These attacks use psychological tactics other than targeting technical flaws to enter your systems.

Some examples are:

• Phishing attacks: Cybercriminals send fake emails by acting as legitimate entities, such as government agencies or banks. Attackers manipulate employees or trick them into revealing essential information by clicking on malicious links or granting unauthorized access.

• Baiting: Attackers leave infected USB drives in public places and wait for employees to plug their company devices into them. Once they do, malware will be deployed in their systems.

• Pretexting: Attackers fabricate scenarios to manipulate employees into sharing sensitive information and the company’s confidential data.

These attacks can have the following impact:

• Loss of confidential company data.
• Phishing scams can lead to fraudulent financial activities.
• Customers lose trust in your organization.

Configuration Vulnerabilities

Security flaws, such as misconfigurations in security tools, IT infrastructure, or cloud environments, occur when your security settings are too lenient. This can expose your systems to unauthorized access and attacks.

Some examples are:

• Unsecured cloud storage: Poorly configured AWS S3 buckets or Azure storage exposes sensitive data to the public.

• Default credentials: Using factory-set or easily guessable passwords can lead to unauthorized access through login credentials.

The impacts are:

• Attackers can gain unauthorized access to enter into sensitive systems.
• Business or customer information may be left open to the public, causing compliance violations and posing regulatory fines.
• Improperly configured firewalls or servers could pave the way for malware infections and security breaches.

Zero-Day Vulnerabilities

Zero-day vulnerabilities are security flaws that are new and unknown to the software vendors. These vulnerabilities are dangerous because cybercriminals exploit them before a patch is available.

Some examples are:

• Microsoft Exchange ProxyLogon: This is a real-life example of how attackers use zero-day vulnerabilities to gain access to corporate emails before Microsoft can issue a patch in 2021.

• Log4Shell: This Java vulnerability allows attackers to execute remote commands and steal sensitive data before the organization can find any fix.

• Stuxnet: It is a sophisticated zero-day attack that targeted Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and caused widespread damage.

The impacts of zero-day vulnerabilities in your organizations are as follows:

• Zero-day exploits are highly malicious, as no security fixes are available to handle these attacks.
• Organizations may face financial losses and legal trials. Leading to reputational damage.

Key Components of Information Security Vulnerability Management

Information security vulnerability management helps organizations identify, assess, and eliminate security weaknesses to secure data and prevent threats. Businesses need a proper approach to build a vulnerability management program for information security. The below components of information security vulnerability management help minimize security risks:

• Asset inventory and classification: Organizations need to list their IT assets to protect their sensitive data from unauthorized access or cyberattacks. Vulnerability Information security requires businesses to classify and safeguard assets based on their risk level and data sensitivity. This includes identifying sensitive data, assigning security controls, and minimizing the attack surface.

• Identifying vulnerabilities: Vulnerability identification is a core part of information security because cybercriminals search for weak points to exploit. Organizations need to detect vulnerabilities before attackers do to protect their confidential information, business processes, and important services. This includes scanning and identifying software vulnerabilities and detecting security gaps in cloud services.

• Assessing and ranking risks: Some vulnerabilities have a low impact on your business operations, while others can have a high impact. Information security teams prioritize vulnerabilities based on their impact and exploitation to address more risky threats first and ensure no data is compromised. This includes evaluating business impacts, analyzing exploitability, and maintaining regulatory requirements.

• Fixing vulnerabilities: Information security vulnerability management involves fixing security flaws in systems to prevent attackers from exploiting them. It involves security teams applying security patches, implementing alternative security controls, and reconfiguring systems.

• Validating security measures and monitoring: Protecting your systems from cyber threats requires continuous monitoring and assessments. Information security vulnerability management continuously monitors your organization to detect and respond to cyber threats in real time. This includes using threat intelligence, incident response and forensics, and SIEM solutions to resolve threats effectively.

• Reporting and documentation: Regulatory bodies and industry standards require you to report and document security incidents and take security controls to minimize the impact. Proper documentation helps you maintain clear reports on incidents and track security improvements. This prepares you for regulatory audits and provides transparency.

Information Security Vulnerability Management Process: Step by Step

Managing vulnerabilities in information security is a continuous process that allows organizations to identify, assess, and remediate security risks before attackers exploit them. This secures your confidential information from threats. Let us understand how information security vulnerability management works:

Step 1: Identifying Information Security Vulnerabilities

The first step in information security vulnerability management is identifying information security vulnerabilities across your organization’s IT infrastructure. This includes identifying flaws in software, weak authentication mechanisms, misconfigurations in networks, and human-related security risks.

Organizations use automated vulnerability scanning, penetration testing methods, security audits and assessments, and threat intelligence sources to identify and analyze threats. By doing so, you can protect sensitive information from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber threats.

Step 2: Assessing and Prioritizing Vulnerabilities

Different security vulnerabilities can have different levels of impact on your business. You need to prioritize them by assessing their impact on your business, severity level, and exploitability using real-time case scenarios.

Organizations rate vulnerabilities on a scale from 0 to 10 using the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS). They allow security teams to evaluate how a vulnerability affects business processes and information assets and check whether the vulnerabilities are prone to attacks regularly. You need to consider asset value before prioritizing vulnerabilities, as these flaws can affect customer databases with personal data.

Step 3: Remediating Vulnerabilities

After identifying and prioritizing vulnerabilities, you can fix or mitigate them based on the type. You need to apply security patches to your systems, operating systems, and third-party applications to close security loopholes.

Security teams can harden their security settings, enforce multi-factor authentication and strong password policy, and disable unused devices. If no immediate patch is available, you can apply temporary mitigation strategies, such as intrusion detection systems, network segmentation, firewalls, etc., to reduce risks.

Step 4: Verifying Security Fixes

After you successfully implement fixes in your software systems, network devices, and third-party applications, you need to confirm that you have resolved all vulnerabilities and have not introduced new issues during remediation.

Re-scan your entire IT infrastructure to verify that patched systems no longer have weaknesses. Use penetration testing methods to ensure there are no hidden vulnerabilities in your systems. You can review logs, check firewall settings, and track access controls to confirm successful remediation efforts.

Step 5: Monitoring and Reporting

With the increased risk of cyber threats, you need to monitor your IT systems continuously, document incidents, and refine your information security strategies. Use Security Information Event Management (SEIM) tools to detect suspicious activities.

Schedule periodic scans and assessments to identify new security gaps before attackers do. Conduct tabletop exercises to simulate real-world attack scenarios and improve response capabilities. Keep your employees informed about the latest phishing tactics, best practices, and malware threats.

Creating an Information Security Vulnerability Management Policy

A well-defined information security vulnerability management policy is essential for organizations to protect data, networks, and systems from cyber threats. This policy outlines some processes and guidelines that you need to follow to identify, assess, and remediate vulnerabilities while aligning with your security goals.

• Find the purpose and scope: Clearly state why your organization needs an information security vulnerability management policy. Define the systems, data, and assets that this policy covers. Align the policy requirements with your existing information security policies and state the areas that need improvement.

• Identify and assign responsibilities: Assign roles and responsibilities to key personnel, such as assigning:

• A Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) to oversee policy implementation
• An IT security team to conduct vulnerability scans
• System admins to apply updates
• Compliance officers to ensure regulatory adherence

• Establish asset inventory and risk classification: Create a comprehensive inventory of IT assets, including databases, applications, servers, cloud services, IoT devices, and endpoints. Classify these assets based on the risk level and business impact.

• Define vulnerability assessment methods: Implement regular vulnerability scanning using security tools. Conduct manual security reviews and penetration testing to detect hidden vulnerabilities. Use threat intelligence sources to track emerging vulnerabilities.

• Establish risk-based prioritization criteria: Allow your security team to use the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) to rank vulnerabilities based on their severity levels. Also, prioritize vulnerabilities by considering factors like exploitability, business impact, and compliance requirements.

• Specify remediation strategies: Set clear timelines for addressing vulnerabilities and specify remediation actions, such as patching software flaws, reconfiguring security settings, and implementing temporary controls.

• Monitor and report: Set up real-time monitoring for vulnerabilities and get weekly or monthly vulnerability reports for security teams and executives. Define a ticketing system to track remediation progress.

• Review and update: Schedule annual or bi-annual policy reviews to update the policy for addressing new threats, regulatory changes, and technologies. You can also gather feedback from your security teams and stakeholders to improve the effectiveness of the policy.

Information Security Vulnerability Management Challenges

Managing vulnerabilities in information security is a continuous and complex process that requires a strong policy to operate in an organization. However, organizations face challenges when trying to manage these vulnerabilities. Let’s understand what the challenges are and how to overcome them:

Challenge: The number of vulnerabilities is increasing every year. Organizations struggle to keep up with tracking and fixing them.

Solution: Implement automated vulnerability scanning tools to detect new vulnerabilities quickly. Prioritize them using metrics like CVSS and factors like exploitability and business impact.

Challenge: Many organizations fail to keep a complete inventory of their IT assets, introducing unauthorized devices and applications in the network.

Solution: Maintain an up-to-date asset inventory using IT asset management tools. Conduct regular security audits to identify shadow IT and unauthorized systems.

Challenge: Inconsistent or delayed patching could expose vulnerabilities for a longer duration. Some patches cause compatibility issues, and legacy systems sometimes refuse to receive security updates.

Solution: Establish an automated patch management program to minimize delays. You can also conduct patch testing in a controlled environment to prevent system failures. For legacy systems, you can use virtual patching and network security controls.

Challenge: Many organizations lack clear metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of their information security vulnerability management strategy. There is no standard format for tracking progress and measuring improvements.

Solution: Define key performance indicators, such as time to detect vulnerabilities, time to remediate high-risk vulnerabilities, and percentage of patched vs unpatched systems. You can use security dashboards and automated reporting tools to track progress and improvements.

Best Practices for Information Security Vulnerability Management

Every unpatched system, outdated security protocol, or misconfigured application allows attackers a chance to exploit sensitive data and disrupt business operations. To stay ahead of threats, you need to implement these best practices to identify, assess, and eliminate weaknesses while maintaining a strong security posture.

• Create a comprehensive asset inventory that includes all servers, network devices, applications, cloud instances, and endpoints.
• Monitor unauthorized devices and applications that could introduce security risks.
• Implement automated vulnerability scanners to detect security weaknesses in real time.
• Perform both internal and external scans to identify vulnerabilities in your network.
• Use a risk-based approach to prioritize vulnerabilities based on CVSS score, exploitability, and business impact.
• Automate patch management to apply updates as soon as they become available.
• Test patches in a sandbox environment before deploying them to production systems.
• Follow the Center for Internet Benchmarks (CIS) to configure systems securely.
• Disable unnecessary services and ports to reduce the attack surface.
• Conduct regular cybersecurity awareness training for employees and stakeholders. Teach them how to detect phishing attempts, social engineering tactics, and suspicious activities.

How does SentinelOne help?

SentinelOne offers Singularity Vulnerability Management to help you find security vulnerabilities in your endpoints, applications, cloud systems, and other devices in your network. This helps you protect the customer and business information that these systems store, process, and handle.

Perform continuous vulnerability assessments on your systems and prioritize them based on business impact and exploitability with SentinelOne. The platform allows you to contain compromised systems to prevent the infection from spreading to other systems. It also lets you mitigate vulnerabilities with automated security workflows to simplify the process and save you time.

Take a demo to explore SentinelOne’s Singularity Vulnerability Management.

Conclusion

Information security vulnerability management in cybersecurity protects your confidential information from cyber threats by identifying and fixing system vulnerabilities. You can perform continuous monitoring, vulnerability assessments, risk-based prioritization, and patch management to harden security and compliance posture and reduce the attack surface.

ISVM requires a strong security policy, best practices, and a security-first culture where employees play an important role in protecting digital assets and sensitive information. Organizations that prioritize vulnerability management can prevent data breaches and compliance violations. It also helps them build trust among customers and partners.

If you are looking to protect your customer and business information from cyber threats and automate your security workflows, use Singularity Vulnerability Management by SentinelOne.