Vulnerability management provides a way for enterprises to do a better job of protecting their networks and assets. It does this by giving you a better view of your networks and enterprise monitoring for any potential weaknesses while providing a remediation framework in case of a breach attempt. Here are some of the goals of vulnerability management, and how it can help your organization.
Complete Visibility without Having to Search for Answers
When thinking about the overarching purpose of vulnerability management, network visibility has to be one of the top concerns. You can’t keep your network secure if you can’t see what’s happening on it. With a great vulnerability management platform, you’ll be able to keep track of broad and granular network activity all from one place.
It’s important to think about essential features when shopping around for vulnerability management platforms. One of the key elements is the ability to automatically identify and scan all network assets and endpoints. Not only is this critical for keeping your networks running properly, it can help you discover vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by dangerous outside parties.
Furthermore, centralization and simplicity are important pillars of vulnerability management. The information you need should be straightforward and easy to find. After all, this is sort of the original point of opting for vulnerability management in the first place—to bring everything you need together in one location.
Ongoing Security
There are many things you can do to help keep your networks protected from threats. Vulnerability management should help enterprises perform ongoing security functions to plug holes before they become gaps. There are a couple ways vulnerability management platforms can help enterprises accomplish this goal.
First, it’s essential to have a system that can intelligently help you realize when something is off. Anomalies happen all the time. Some, however, are far more significant than others. Through an ongoing security protocol, your vulnerability management service can send notifications to the proper people when something is amiss.
It’s also important to have automated responses built into your vulnerability management protocols. Chances are you won’t have someone directly monitoring this 24 hours a day. But threats to your network don’t take time off. This is why there needs to be some automated triage built into your suite so that remediation can begin quickly. On average, it takes 280 days to isolate a data breach. Unimaginable damage can be done to your business in this amount of time. Vulnerability management automated responses can help enterprises cut the heads off potential threats before they turn into full-on breaches.
Stop Threats Before They Become Problems
As mentioned in the previous section, it often takes organizations a long time to actually contain a data breach. The longer a breach goes undetected, or even go on after being recognized, the more pain it can cause your enterprise. The costs of a breach can be staggering, regardless of the size of your business. In fact, about 60 percent of small businesses will shut down following a data breach. It’s not an exaggeration to say vulnerability management can make or break your company.
Certainly, the financial aspect to a breach can be devastating to a business. But that’s not all. Your reputation is on the line when you cut corners with network security. Compromising sensitive customer data can destroy your brand, and potentially lead to massive lawsuits. Vulnerability management can help you stay ahead of these problems.
Reduce Costs
Every organization should think of ways to reduce costs. While some might balk at the idea of spending money to save it, this is certainly the framework behind vulnerability management. As already mentioned, the monetary costs associated with a data breach can be extreme to the point of forcing closure. When the stakes are this high, making an investment in security seems like a logical choice.
This, however, isn’t the only way vulnerability management can cut costs. It’s as-a-service model makes it expense-light and scalable. Additionally, you don’t have to hire more staff or purchase network infrastructure to adopt vulnerability management. When you put all this together, the cost benefit of vulnerability management becomes clear.
The goal of vulnerability management is to comprehensively make your enterprise networks more secure. Finding the right platform for this can make all the difference to your organization’s future.
