How can you scale your vulnerability assessment program?

The first thing is that you need to have a detailed and clear inventory of systems so that the assessment is realistic and covers the entire organisation holistically Further the inventory will enable you to plan and apply patches or actions to be taken against vulnerabilities to prevent them from getting exploited by malicious actors To conclude I will add that first step in vulnerability assessment is having correct and detailed inventory

The vulnerability program can be scaled by including automation, collaboration, continuous monitoring, and skill development. At the start of the process, clear objectives and scope must be established, the assets and systems in focus must be defined, and a roadmap for ongoing improvement must be created. For example, introduce automated vulnerability scanning tools, concentrate on addressing critical issues, implement a risk-based strategy to prioritize vulnerabilities based on severity and potential impact, and ensure that resources are allocated efficiently. Plus, integration with DevOps and IT processes is crucial to embed security into the software development life cycle, promoting a proactive stance against emerging threats.

To scale your vulnerability assessment program, consider the following strategies: Using different tools for scanning vulnerabilities, prioritizing vulnerabilities based on their severity and impact. continuous monitoring, embedding security assessments into the software development lifecycle, choosing scalable tools and infrastructure, training your team regarding the latest threats and their mitigation techniques, collaborating, creating a proper incident response plan, and generating regular reports on the status of vulnerability assessments.

A risk analysis is mandatory to achieve this goal . Because a lot of « buisness » risks that could impact your buisiness are often forgaten . What does impact your compagny buisness must be identified.

Accurately defining the scope and objectives of your vulnerability assessment program is crucial before initiating asset scans. This ensures focus on the most critical assets and adherence to compliance requirements. Key questions to address include the identification of assets for scanning, the frequency of scans, the tools and methods employed, and how to measure, report, and communicate the scan results to stakeholders. A clear definition prevents redundant scans and aligns the program with your business goals and risk tolerance.

Utilize automated vulnerability scanning tools to efficiently scan a large number of assets. This helps in identifying vulnerabilities across your infrastructure in a timely manner.

Automating scans and workflows is essential for scaling your vulnerability assessment program. It saves time and resources, and minimizes human error by handling repetitive tasks like asset discovery, scan initiation, result analysis, and report generation. Integration with other systems, such as asset and patch management, incident response, and remediation, further enhances efficiency. Employing scripts, APIs, dashboards, and alerts for event-based scanning, and automated workflows for task allocation based on vulnerability severity and urgency, are examples of automation techniques.

Yes, But keep in mind that specified patch must not be configured to Be automatically installed . Because the impact of a lot of security patch is often published with bugs after the installation of PATCHS . And a rollback is often done on emergency…

Automating a scan is a great step to do but it is really important that this exercise is not done during business hours. You don't want to overflow the network which can take resources and can potentially cause harm to the operations.

To optimize efficiency and response time, the vulnerability assessment program integrates automated scanning tools and workflows. Automated scans swiftly identify vulnerabilities across diverse assets, while streamlined workflows facilitate rapid analysis and prioritization. This automation ensures a proactive and continuous monitoring approach, allowing for swift detection and mitigation of security weaknesses. By automating these processes, organizations can enhance their ability to manage and respond to vulnerabilities, fortifying their cybersecurity posture against evolving threats in a timely and efficient manner.

Risk based prioritization of vulnerabilities coupled with vulnerability threat intelligence and organizational context is what matters most for prioritizing remediation of given vulnerability. For example, my practical formula for prioritization and remediation of vulnerabilities is: Remotely exploitable vulnerabilities(RCE) + CVSS score >9 + EPSSv3 50%+ ransomware exploited + CISA KEV Using above formula, the patch must be prioritized first on Internet facing business critical assets followed by other non-critical or internal assets secured by multiple layers of defense (this is context). This actionable technique can greatly help vulnerability management team maximizing their focus from thousands to only few of vulnerabilities to fix.

To begin with firstly identify and prioritize the critical digital asserts based on the significance of the business requirement. Focus on vulnerabilities in high priority system first.

Prioritizing vulnerabilities is the key to robust vulnerability management. It helps in allocating resources (time , effort, opportunity cost) wisely to address the most important ones. While prioritizing, consider your own environment. Do you know the potential attack paths that exist within your systems? Are there compensating controls in place that might mitigate the risks associated with certain vulnerabilities? Do you have processes in place, like patch management, that can mitigate? Answering contextual questions like these can help with your prioritization efforts.

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. Risk-based vulnerability management uses machine learning to correlate asset criticality, vulnerability severity and threat actor activity. It helps you cut through vulnerability overload so you can focus on the relatively few vulnerabilities that pose the most risk to your enterprise.

One very important aspect in this entire process of prioritisation and remediation is the use of Artificial intelligence. With the number of vulnerabilities being identified every hour and the manpower expertise available it's very difficult to keep track of every vulnerability and act on it. Hence incorporating AI is much needed so as to ensure that appropriate actions are triggered when the human expertise is not available or misses it. Something like a SOAR can be thought of for assistance in vulnerability prioritisation based upon cvss or business model and subsequent remediation of the vulnerability

CONTRIBUTION #22 Establishing predefined KPIs can provide comprehensive visibility, enhancing your action plan and revealing both strengths and weaknesses in the vulnerability scanning program. Given the interconnected nature of vulnerability management with change, patch, and release management, any improvements will have a cascading impact across these systems.

To scale your vulnerability assessment program, continuous review and improvement are crucial. In my journey, monitoring performance to identify weaknesses and areas for enhancement has been key, as well as gathering feedback. Staying current with trends and updating the program accordingly is vital. Audits, efficiency metrics, stakeholder satisfaction surveys, and learning from the experiences of others are tools I've found essential in ensuring the program's evolution and adherence to best practices.

Regular review and improvement of the vulnerability assessment program are integral to its effectiveness. Ongoing assessments enable the identification of program strengths and areas for enhancement. By analyzing metrics, feedback, and incident response data, organizations can refine processes, update tools, and adapt strategies to evolving threats. Continuous improvement fosters a proactive security posture, ensuring the program remains robust and responsive in safeguarding against emerging vulnerabilities and cyber risks.

Regularly review the effectiveness of your vulnerability assessment program and identify areas for improvement. Use metrics and KPIs to measure the success of your program and use this data to make informed decisions about how to improve the program over time.

Automate scanning processes, prioritize critical vulnerabilities, and regularly update assessment tools and methodologies to scale your vulnerability assessment program effectively.

We can consider that automation is a good choice. Automating scans can save time allowing us to handle a large numer of assets and vulnerabilities. In Addition to that, we need to maintain an up-to-date inventory of all hardware, software and network assets to prioritize and identify vulnerabilities. Also, we can implement technologies to automatically identify new vulnerabilities.

There are different approaches and best practices for scaling a vulnerability assessment program, depending on the size, complexity, and maturity of the organization and its security goals. However while planing or working towards scaling VA programs keep in mind that there is not one recipe for every business/organization. VA programs should be planned while considering the business logic and infrastructure requirements. The mitigation should be carefully monitored and executed while working with service owners as well as stakeholders to mitigate the vulnerabilities if can be done or reduce the risk surface if mitigation is not completely possible.

A lot of people related scaling a VM program to "doing more scans" .. it is the quality of the scans you should be improving and not the quantity ! To improve your VM program ask yourself: - Are you able to risk assess / threat model the findings to see which are valid or not ? - Are you able to integrate new threats quickly into the scanning results ? - Do you have a conslidated dashboard of your on-prem, cloud, application vulnerabilities or a hodge-podge of disconnect reports ? Once these questions are answered .. you can you have scaled your program

Asset discovery is one of most common steps we all tend to miss and focus on repeatedly scanning results. If we don’t know our assets well how can we protect or prioritize them. Second, a centralized viewing is must but the dashboard should be able to provide actionable data and integration to other technologies which then can sits within your tech ecosystem.

➡️ Your first scans probably will create a lot of work. Be prepared for that. Additional thoughts: ☑️ Check logs of scanned systems and adjacent systems for errors/alerts/anomalies during and after scanning. ☑️ Make sure your always scanning with the latest definitions, regularly test with canaries (introduce a new vuln. on purpose on a test system). ☑️ Have the vendor check your configuration from time to time. ☑️ Be prepared to deal with False-Positives. ☑️ Be aware that the vulnerability scanning systems are interesting points for attackers and that they need to be secured and controlled with great care. Use very restrictive access control. Do not share accounts to access them and use 4-eye principle for any relevant config changes!