For any organization, effective vulnerability management is essential. However, when it comes to the implementation of vulnerability management, most organizations fail for several reasons. Highlighted below are the vulnerability management challenges that lead to poor cybersecurity if overlooked.
Insufficient Asset Inventory
Organizations can only scan and patch the assets that they know exist. They can’t protect what they can’t see. Modern-day organizations have tons of assets, including massive databases, continuously updating software, shared services, third-party applications, and so much more that open the doors for various attack vectors. If these assets are unknown, they may also be unpatched and potentially vulnerable, creating an effortless entry point for attackers. The absence of a clear and updated asset inventory is a significant vulnerability management challenge.
Vulnerability Overload
Vulnerability management teams identify a massive number of vulnerabilities during a scan, and out of those vulnerabilities, they patch some and neglect others. And, if the vulnerability management process is irregular, the number of unpatched vulnerabilities increases. Working with a vulnerability debt makes the situation undefendable. To address the flow of emerging vulnerabilities and timely mitigate them, organizations must follow a continuous approach focused on automated vulnerability identification.
Ineffective Vulnerability Prioritization
From identifying vulnerabilities to blindly patching them is not never the solution. It’s important to calculate the risk first and subsequently, focus on the critical vulnerabilities. Often vulnerability management teams spend their time and efforts on false positives and low-risk vulnerabilities while overlooking critical flaws. That’s why it’s imperative to prioritize vulnerabilities.