Implement Risk-Based Vulnerability Management
Get off the patching merry-go-round and start mitigating risk!
- Vulnerability scanners, industry alerts, and penetration tests are revealing more and more vulnerabilities, and it is unclear how to manage them.
- Organizations are struggling to prioritize the vulnerabilities for remediation, as there are many factors to consider, including the threat of the vulnerability and the potential remediation option itself.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Patches are often seen as the only answer to vulnerabilities, but these are not always the most suitable solution.
- Vulnerability management does not equal patch management. It includes identifying and assessing the risk of the vulnerability, and then selecting a remediation option which goes beyond just patching alone.
- There is more than one way to tackle the problem. Leverage your existing security controls in order to protect the organization.
Impact and Result
- At the conclusion of this blueprint, you will have created a full vulnerability management program that will allow you to take a risk-based approach to vulnerability remediation.
- Assessing a vulnerability’s risk will enable you to properly determine the true urgency of a vulnerability within the context of your organization; this ensures you are not just blindly following what the tool is reporting.
- The risk-based approach will allow you prioritize your discovered vulnerabilities and take immediate action on critical and high vulnerabilities, while allowing your standard remediation cycle to address the medium to low vulnerabilities.
- With your program defined and developed, you now need to configure your vulnerability scanning tool, or acquire one if you don’t already have a tool in place.
- Lastly, while vulnerability management will help address your systems and applications, how do you know if you are secure from external malicious actors? Penetration testing will offer visibility, allowing you to plug those holes and attain an environment with a smaller risk surface.
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After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
9.8/10
Overall Impact
$39,229
Average $ Saved
21
Average Days Saved
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
Chapman University
Guided Implementation
10/10
$68,500
10
The best part was the expertise and professionalism brought to the project by Petar. Now only did he provide guidance and knowledge to the project,... Read More
Open Technology Solutions LLC
Guided Implementation
10/10
$68,500
10
Jon came in with great experience and advice based on his time working at the enterprise level in financial services.
Peel Regional Police
Guided Implementation
9/10
$5,000
10
Yolo County
Guided Implementation
9/10
$19,865
18
City of Atlanta / Atlanta Information Management (AIM)
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
20
Girl Guides of Canada
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
10
Noramco, LLC
Guided Implementation
10/10
$34,281
60
the experience was absolutely great. Mr Sooknanan experience and approaches are exceptional.
California Natural Resources Agency
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
32
Shastri proves to be a valuable asset to any conversation I've been apart of with him. He is knowledgeable and provides useful insights and recomme... Read More
Implement Risk-Based Vulnerability Management
Get off the patching merry-go-round and start mitigating risk!
Table of Contents
4 Analyst Perspective 5 Executive Summary 6 Common Obstacles 8 Risk-based approach to vulnerability management 16 Step 1.1: Vulnerability management defined 24 Step 1.2: Defining scope and roles 34 Step 1.3: Cloud considerations for vulnerability management | 33 Step 1.4: Vulnerability detection 46 Step 2.1: Triage vulnerabilities 51 Step 2.2: Determine high-level business criticality 56 Step 2.3: Consider current security posture 61 Step 2.4: Risk assessment of vulnerabilities 71 Step 3.1: Assessing remediation options |
Table of Contents
80 Step 3.2: Scheduling and executing remediation 85 Step 3.3: Continuous improvement 89 Step 4.1: Metrics, KPIs, and CSFs 94 Step 4.2: Vulnerability management policy 97 Step 4.3: Select & implement a scanning tool 107 Step 4.4: Penetration testing 118 Summary of accomplishment | 119 Additional Support 120 Bibliography |
Analyst Perspective
Vulnerabilities will always be present. Know the unknowns!
In this age of discovery, technology changes at such a rapid pace. New things are discovered, both in new technology and in old. The pace of change can often be very confusing as to where to start and what to do.
The ever-changing nature of technology means that vulnerabilities will always be present. Taking measures to address these completely will consume all your department’s time and resources. That, and your efforts will quickly become stale as new vulnerabilities are uncovered. Besides, what about the systems that simply can’t be patched? The key is to understand the vulnerabilities and the levels of risk they pose to your organization, to prioritize effectively and to look beyond patching.
A risk-based approach to vulnerability management will ensure you are prioritizing appropriately and protecting the business. Reduce the risk surface!
Vulnerability management is more than just systems and application patching. It is a full process that includes patching, compensating controls, segmentation, segregation, and heightened diligence in security monitoring.
 | Jimmy Tom Research Advisor – Security, Privacy, Risk, and Compliance Info-Tech Research Group |
Executive Summary
| Your Challenge Vulnerability scanners, industry alerts, and penetration tests are revealing more and more vulnerabilities, and it is unclear how to manage them. Organizations are struggling to prioritize the vulnerabilities for remediation, as there are many factors to consider, including the threat of the vulnerability and the potential remediation option. | Common Obstacles Patches are often seen as the answer to vulnerabilities, but these are not always the most suitable solution. Some systems deemed vulnerable simply cannot be patched or easily replaced. Companies are unaware of the risk implications that come from leaving the vulnerability open and from the remediation option itself. | Info-Tech’s Approach Design and implement a vulnerability management program that identifies, prioritizes, and remediates vulnerabilities. Understand what needs to be considered when implementing remediation options, including patches, configuration changes, and defense-in-depth controls. Build a process that is easy to understand and allows vulnerabilities to be remediated proactively, instead of in an ad hoc fashion. |
Info-Tech Insight
Vulnerability management does not always equal patch management. There is more than one way to tackle the problem, particularly if a system cannot be easily patched or replaced. If a vulnerability cannot be completely remediated, steps to reduce the risk to a tolerable level must be taken.
Common obstacles
These barriers make vulnerability management difficult to address for many organizations:
| CVSS Score Distribution From the National Vulnerability Database:  (Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database Dashboard) |
Leverage risk to sort, triage, and prioritize vulnerabilities
Reduce your risk surface to avoid cost to your business; everything else is table stakes.
Reduce the critical and high vulnerabilities below the risk threshold and operationalize the remediation of medium/low vulnerabilities by following your effective vulnerability management program cycles.
Identify vulnerability sources
An inventory of your scanning tool and vulnerability threat intelligence data sources will help you determine a viable strategy for addressing vulnerabilities. Defining roles and responsibilities ahead of time will ensure you are not left scrambling when dealing with vulnerabilities.
Triage and prioritize
Bring the vulnerabilities into context by assessing vulnerabilities based on your security posture and mechanisms and not just what your data sources report. This will allow you to gauge the true urgency of the vulnerabilities based on risk and determine an effective mitigation plan.
Remediate vulnerabilities
Address the vulnerabilities based on their level of risk. Patching isn't the only risk mitigation action; some systems simply cannot be patched, but other options are available.
Reduce the risk down to medium/low levels and engage your regular operational processes to deal with the latter.
Measure and formalize
Upon implementation of the program, measure with metrics to ensure that the program is successful. Improve the program with each iteration of vulnerability mitigation to ensure continuous improvement.
Tactical Insight 1
All actions to address vulnerabilities should be based on risk and the organization’s established risk tolerance.
Tactical Insight 2
Reduce the risk surface down below the risk threshold.
The industry has shifted to a risk-based approach
Traditional vulnerability management is no longer viable.
“For those of us in the vulnerability management space, ensuring that money, resources, and time are strategically spent is both imperative and difficult. Resources are dwindling fast, but the vulnerability problem sure isn’t.” (Kenna Security)
“Using vulnerability scanners to identify unpatched software is no longer enough. Keeping devices, networks, and digital assets safe takes a much broader, risk-based vulnerability management strategy – one that includes vulnerability assessment and mitigation actions that touch the entire ecosystem.” (Balbix)
“Unlike legacy vulnerability management, risk-based vulnerability management goes beyond just discovering vulnerabilities. It helps you understand vulnerability risks with threat context and insight into potential business impact.” (Tenable)
“A common mistake when prioritizing patching is equating a vulnerability’s Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score with risk. Although CVSS scores can provide useful insight into the anatomy of a vulnerability and how it might behave if weaponized, they are standardized and thus don’t reflect either of the highly situational variables — namely, weaponization likelihood and potential impact — that factor into the risk the vulnerability poses to an organization.” (SecurityWeek)
Why a take risk-based approach?
Vulnerabilities, by the numbers
60% — In 2019, 60% of breaches were due to unpatched vulnerabilities.
74% — In the same survey, 74% of survey responses said they cannot take down critical applications and systems to patch them quickly. (Source: SecurityBoulevard, 2019)
Info-Tech Insight
Taking a risk-based approach will allow you to focus on mitigating risk, rather than “just patching” your environment.
The average cost of a breach in 2020 is $3.86 million, and “…the price tag was much less for mature companies and industries and far higher for firms that had lackluster security automation and incident response processes.” (Dark Reading)
Vulnerability ManagementA risk-based approach | Reduce the risk surface to avoid cost to your business, everything else is table stakes |   |
1 | Identify |
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| Identify vulnerability management scanning tools & external threat intel sources (Mitre CVE, US-CERT, vendor alerts, etc.) | Vulnerability information feeds:
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2 | Analyze | |||||||||||||||||
| Assign actual risk (impact x urgency) to the organization based on current security posture
Triage based on risk › Your organization's risk tolerance threshold |  | |||||||||||||||||
3 | Assess | |||||||||||||||||
| Plan risk mitigation strategy › | Consider:
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Info-Tech’s vulnerability management methodology
Focus on developing the most efficient processes.
Vulnerability management isn’t “old school.”
The vulnerability management market is relatively mature; however, vulnerability management remains a very relevant and challenging topic.
Security practitioners are inundated with the advice they need to prioritize their vulnerabilities. Every vulnerability scanning vendor will proclaim their ability to prioritize the identified vulnerabilities.
Third-party prioritization methodology can’t be effectively applied across all organizations. Each organization is too unique with different constraints. No tool or service can account for these variables.
When patching is not possible, other options exist: configuration changes (hardening), defense-in-depth, compensating controls, and even elevated security monitoring are possible options.
Info-Tech Insight
Vulnerability management is not only patch management. Patching is only one aspect.
Blueprint deliverables
Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:
Key deliverable:Vulnerability Management SOPThe Standard operating procedure (SOP) will comprise the end-to-end description of the program: roles & responsibilities, data flow, and expected outcomes of the program.  | Vulnerability Management Policy Template for your vulnerability management policy. |  | Vulnerability Tracking Tool This tool offers a template to track vulnerabilities and how they are remedied. |  |
| Vulnerability Scanning RFP Template Request for proposal template for the selection of a vulnerability scanning tool. |  | Vulnerability Risk Assessment Tool Methodology to assess vulnerability risk by determining impact and likelihood. |  |
Blueprint benefits
IT Benefits
| Business Benefits
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Info-Tech’s process can save significant financial resources
| Phase | Measured Value |
| Phase 1: Identify vulnerability sources |
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| Phase 2: Triage vulnerabilities and assign urgencies |
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| Phase 3: Remediate vulnerabilities |
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| Phase 4: Continually improve the vulnerability management process |
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| Potential financial savings from using Info-Tech resources | Phase 1 ($1,600) + Phase 2 ($6,400) + Phase 3 ($10,400) + Phase 4 ($10,400) = $28,800 |
Guided Implementation
A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.
A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.
What does a typical GI on this topic look like?
Phase 1 | Phase 2 | Phase 3 | Phase 4 |
| Call #1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges. Call #2: Discuss current state and vulnerability sources. | Call #3: Identify triage methods and business criticality. Call #4:Review current defense-in-depth and discuss risk assessment. | Call #5: Discuss remediation options and scheduling. Call #6: Review release and change management and continuous improvement. | Call #7: Identify metrics, KPIs, and CSFs. Call #8: Review vulnerability management policy. |
Workshop Overview
Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | |
| Activities | Identify vulnerability sources1.1 What is vulnerability management? 1.2 Define scope and roles 1.3 Cloud considerations for vulnerability management 1.4 Vulnerability detection | Triage and prioritize2.1 Triage vulnerabilities 2.2 Determine high-level business criticality 2.3 Consider current security posture 2.4 Risk assessment of vulnerabilities | Remediate vulnerabilities3.1 Assess remediation options 3.2 Schedule and execute remediation 3.3 Drive continuous improvement | Measure and formalize4.1 Metrics, KPIs & CSFs 4.2 Vulnerability Management Policy 4.3 Select & implement a scanning tool 4.4 Penetration testing | Next Steps and Wrap-Up (offsite)5.1 Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days 5.2 Set up review time for workshop deliverables and to discuss next steps |
| Deliverables |
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Implement Risk-Based Vulnerability Management
Phase 1
Identify Vulnerability Sources
Phase 11.1 What is vulnerability management? | Phase 22.1 Triage vulnerabilities | ||
Phase 33.1 Assessing remediation options | Phase 44.1 Metrics, KPIs & CSFs |
This phase will walk you through the following activities:
Establish a common understanding of vulnerability management, define the roles, scope, and information sources of vulnerability detection.
This phase involves the following participants:
- Security operations team
- IT Security Manager
- IT Director
- CISO
Step 1.1
Vulnerability Management Defined
Activities
None for this section
This step will walk you through the following activities:
Establish a common understanding of vulnerability management and its place in the IT organization.
This step involves the following participants:
- Security operations team
- IT Security Manager
- IT Director
- CISO
Outcomes of this step
Foundational knowledge of vulnerability management in your organization.
Identify vulnerability sources| Step 1.1 | Step 1.2 | Step 1.3 | Step 1.4 |
What is vulnerability management?
It’s more than just patching.
| “Most organizations do not have a formal process for vulnerability management.” (Morey Haber, VP of Technology, BeyondTrust, 2016) |
Effective vulnerability management
It’s not easy, but it’s much harder without a process in place.
|  You’re not just doing this for yourself. It’s also for your auditors.Many compliance and regulatory obligations require organizations to have thorough documentation of their vulnerability management practices. |
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About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
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Get the help you need in this 4-phase advisory process. You'll receive 8 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.
Guided Implementation 1: Identify vulnerability sources
- Call 1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges.
- Call 2: Discuss current state and vulnerability sources.
Guided Implementation 2: Triage vulnerabilities and assign priorities
- Call 1: Identify triage methods and business criticality.
- Call 2: Review current defense-in-depth and discuss risk assessment.
Guided Implementation 3: Remediate vulnerabilities
- Call 1: Discuss remediation options and scheduling.
- Call 2: Review release and change management and continuous improvement.
Guided Implementation 4: Measure and formalize
- Call 1: Identify metrics, KPIs, and CSFs.
- Call 2: Review vulnerability management policy.
Contributors
- 2 anonymous contributors from the manufacturing sector
- 1 anonymous contributor from a US government agency
- 2 anonymous contributors from the financial sector
- 1 anonymous contributor from the medical technology industry
- 2 anonymous contributors from higher education
- 1 anonymous contributor from a Canadian government agency
- 7 anonymous others, information gathered from advisory calls
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