The main basic elements of a vulnerability management process can be easily remembered as “the 4 Rs mantra” : Recognize, Realize, Repair and Record.
Recognize: A thorough risk assessment analysis will identify vulnerabilities that could potentially affect your software, applications, and operational systems. One quick and effective process to recognize these issues would be to create a complete workflow of your operational system processes, thereby facilitating a clearer, linear perspective of all the areas where you may be potentially at risk.
Realize: Next you will realize the seriousness of each potential threat to your operational systems. It is essential that you identify and prioritize the potency each possible threat and vulnerability represents to your operational systems. Once prioritized, you can create a step-by-step plan to eradicate those threats and vulnerabilities.
Repair: Now you are ready to develop a “best course of action” plan to ensure these potential threats are never realized. For every threat and vulnerability, a fix, patch, or repair will need to be completed. At this time, it is a good idea to closely monitor those areas determined to be at risk and decrease the amount of access available to those areas. After all the recognized vulnerabilities have been addressed, you will need to go back to the beginning to retest every vulnerability, ensuring that all fixes, patches, etc. have been successful in stopping the perceived threats.
Record: It is important to keep a record of all vulnerabilities discovered, the location of those vulnerabilities, efforts (fixes, patches, etc.) made to address them, and the effectiveness of those efforts. This will help your future efforts in identifying vulnerabilities and threats. Additionally, it will support significant responsibility and awareness for general security, ensuring important compliance standards are being met throughout your organization.