What are the key challenges and benefits of automating TVM processes in your SOC?

Security operations centers (SOCs) are the nerve centers of cyber defense for many organizations. They monitor, detect, and respond to threats and vulnerabilities in real time, using a variety of tools and processes. However, managing a SOC is not an easy task, especially in the face of increasing complexity, volume, and sophistication of cyberattacks. In this article, we will explore some of the key challenges and benefits of automating threat and vulnerability management (TVM) processes in your SOC, and how to implement them effectively.

1 What is TVM and why is it important?

TVM is the process of identifying, assessing, prioritizing, and remediating the risks and weaknesses in your IT systems and networks. It helps you to reduce your attack surface, comply with regulations, and improve your security posture. TVM is essential for any SOC, as it enables you to proactively prevent or mitigate potential breaches, rather than reactively dealing with the consequences.

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Amber J. Pearson

Senior Executive Service | Cybersecurity Strategist | Thought Leader (Personal Account)
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Additionally, TVM is critical in protecting your assets and business reputation. TVM must be a continuous and proactive approach in addressing the protection of IT systems, networks and data. By ensuring that its continuous means that you will consistently have opportunities to improve your processes.

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2 What are the challenges of manual TVM?

Manual TVM is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and prone to errors. It involves collecting data from multiple sources, such as scanners, agents, logs, and reports, and analyzing them manually or with limited automation. It also requires coordination and communication between different teams and stakeholders, such as security analysts, IT administrators, and business owners. Manual TVM can result in inconsistent, outdated, or incomplete information, which can lead to missed or false alerts, inefficient remediation, and wasted resources.

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Amber J. Pearson

Senior Executive Service | Cybersecurity Strategist | Thought Leader (Personal Account)
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I've seen this happen in large and complex organizations in which there were data integrity issues that were a result of a tedious and labor intensive manual process in evaluating TVM data. This also lead to issues in employee morale because employees are burnt out by spending too many hours on TVM tasks that had integrity flaws. This will greatly impact your organization if automation isn't a key investment.

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3 How can automation improve TVM?

Automation can streamline and optimize TVM processes by using software or scripts to perform tasks that are repetitive, routine, or complex. For example, automation can scan assets for vulnerabilities and threats continuously and consistently without human intervention, correlate and enrich data from different sources and tools to provide a unified view of risk exposure and security posture, prioritize and rank vulnerabilities and threats based on severity, impact, and exploitability to align with business objectives and risk appetite, assign and track remediation actions and workflows to verify results and outcomes, as well as generate and share reports and dashboards that show the progress of your TVM program.

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4 What are the benefits of automated TVM?

Automated TVM can bring several benefits to your SOC, such as enhanced efficiency and productivity, improved accuracy and reliability, increased agility and responsiveness, and better visibility and accountability. You can save time and effort by automating tedious tasks and focus on those that require human judgment. Automating data collection, analysis, and validation can reduce errors and inconsistencies. Automating scanning, prioritization, and remediation processes can help you detect and respond to vulnerabilities faster. Moreover, automating reporting and dashboarding processes can help you monitor the performance of your TVM program and demonstrate your compliance to your stakeholders.

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5 How to implement automated TVM in your SOC?

When implementing automated TVM in your SOC, it is important to plan, execute, and evaluate carefully. Start by defining your objectives and scope, assessing your current state and gaps, and designing an automation strategy and roadmap. Then, implement and test the solution, before monitoring and improving it. During this process, consider the processes, workflows, roles, responsibilities, metrics, indicators, functionality, performance, training, support staff and users. Finally, measure the results and outcomes of the automation solution to identify any issues or risks. Make sure to update and optimize the solution based on feedback and changes.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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What are the key challenges and benefits of automating TVM processes in your SOC?

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1 What is TVM and why is it important?

2 What are the challenges of manual TVM?

3 How can automation improve TVM?

4 What are the benefits of automated TVM?

5 How to implement automated TVM in your SOC?

6 Here’s what else to consider

Threat & Vulnerability Management

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