Understanding the Vulnerability Management Lifecycle

On average, thousands of vulnerabilities are discovered every month. In fact 2024 had over 40,000 vulnerabilities reported. Scanning and tracking the plethora of vulnerabilities on a daily basis is both impossible and unnecessary. On the contrary, being aware of these to understand if they would affect the organization's network and endpoints is also crucial for IT admins. This is when organizations implement a vulnerability management lifecycle for the network.

What is the Vulnerability Management Lifecycle?

The vulnerability management lifecycle is a continuous, often automated process of scanning, identifying, prioritizing, and mitigating vulnerabilities in the managed IT assets of an organization.

To break it down, the vulnerability management lifecycle consists of the below-mentioned stages:

1. Planning and preparation
2. Vulnerability scanning and assessment
3. Vulnerability prioritization and resolution
4. Reporting

Organizations leverage vulnerability management solutions to implement and automate the vulnerability management lifecycle in their network. This allows better prioritization of threats, efficient use of threat mitigation, and improvement in the overall cybersecurity posture.

Let us discuss in detail the various stages of the vulnerability management lifecycle now.

Stages of the Vulnerability Management Lifecycle

1) Planning and Preparation

This includes collating a list of the assets (i.e. computers, servers, network devices, operating systems, etc.) to be scanned and assessed for vulnerabilities. In addition, certain organizations have dedicated teams where the vulnerability management workflow is distributed among certain stakeholders.

The IT teams also monitor the existing policies associated with each asset to determine potential false positives. Lastly, the teams also plan for impact and mitigation, in case vulnerabilities and security breaches are detected in the network.

2) Vulnerability Scanning and Assessment

The next step is to scan the network for vulnerabilities and assess the impacts that they can cause. IT teams can schedule the vulnerability scans (daily, weekly, or monthly) based on the size of the network and the types of endpoints managed. The scanning process can be seamlessly automated by leveraging vulnerability scanning tools. Once scanned, the vulnerabilities, if detected, are further classified and prioritized for remediation.

3) Prioritization and Remediation

Before remediation or mitigation of the detected vulnerabilities, it is important to prioritize them. This is because not all vulnerabilities will impact the systems uniformly. While there might be some that should be negated as fast as possible, there can also be others that do not pose a threat and would be a drain of resources to mitigate.

The prioritization of detected vulnerabilities is made on certain factors such as risk-based assessment, CVSS scores, impacts on the business, likelihood of exploitation, and the availability of patches.

Once prioritized, the vulnerabilities are remediated via patches and workarounds released by the vendor. In case of non-availability, those are mitigated to cut down on imminent risks.

4) Reporting

Generating documentation and reports for the vulnerability management lifecycle is crucial for cyber audits and for adhering to compliance standards such as GDPR, PCI DSS, etc. Moreover, these reports serve as important parameters to improve the vulnerability management process and notify the stakeholders about the current security posture, vulnerabilities neutralized, and upcoming plans.

Benefits of Implementing Vulnerability Management Lifecycle for Organizations

Adopting a streamlined vulnerability management lifecycle has manifold benefits for an organization, starting with the following:

• Improved Security Posture that ensures proactive identification and mitigation of vulnerabilities to reduce the likelihood of exploitation by threat actors.
• Regulatory Compliance to adhere to compliances and to meet industry regulations and standards.
• Better utilization of resources by prioritizing mitigation of vulnerabilities that pose a significant likelihood of exploitation and ensuring optimal usage of resources and manpower are directed where they are required the most.

Streamline Vulnerability Management Lifecycle with ManageEngine

A well-defined vulnerability management lifecycle is indispensable, especially with the exponential increase in vulnerabilities and threats. Incorporating continuous assessment and remediation is hence a requisite for organizations to keep their cyber-health secure, up, and running.

ManageEngine's vulnerability management software - Vulnerability Manager Plus offers automated scanning, detection, and remediation of a wide array of vulnerabilities, starting with zero-days, critical vulnerabilities, security misconfigurations, etc. Furthermore, this software supports a wide variety of devices including servers, workstations, laptops, and network devices.

Vulnerability Manager Plus offers IT teams the much-needed unified visibility, that allows them to monitor the managed endpoints within the network as well as scan, prioritize, and mitigate the vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in them - all from a single console. To know more, try out a 30-day free trial of the software.