Last week through our blog post we established that organizations need to conduct cybersecurity vulnerability assessments on a regular basis to secure their sensitive data ensuring their networks and systems cannot be exploited. However, a failure in following the above-mentioned assessments could lead to a catastrophic conclusion for many organizations. This is because threat actors are always looking for new and innovative ways to exploit security vulnerabilities.
However, IT security experts can easily identify the weaknesses in a system or network to help improve the security posture of their systems with the help of vulnerability analysis. For vulnerability test and management to be successful there are four main steps that must be followed. By undergoing training to gain the necessary knowledge and skills, security experts can execute these steps in the best way possible.
What is a Vulnerability Assessment?
The process of identifying security weaknesses in a system or IT equipment by recognizing, analyzing, and prioritizing the weaknesses found is called Vulnerability Assessment. Any prevailing cyber threats in the system can be ascertained with the help of the assessment recommending the best way to nullify them. Moreover, vulnerability analysis can be applied across industries, ranging from IT to energy since it is not specific to any sector.
Types of Vulnerability Assessment –
Here are some types of Vulnerability Assessment that can be carried out by organizations to prevent security breaches:
Database Assessment – This assessment is conducted to assess the database or to identify the grey areas in a database.
Application Assessment – The weaknesses in web applications and their source code is identified by this process.
Network Assessment – Cybersecurity professionals use this process to identify network security attacks. Policies and practices are assessed to make sure there is zero vulnerability related to wired or wireless networks.
Host Assessment – This process is used to identify the server and host vulnerabilities. The port and services are examined in this process while providing visibility into the patch history of the scanned and configured systems.
The Four-step Guide To Vulnerability Assessment
We will now highlight the four-step method that security experts should implement for an effective vulnerability assessment process utilizing any automated or manual tool.
Initial Assessment –
Security experts, in this stage, will need to identify the assets and define the risk and its critical value for each device. During a vulnerability assessment, the importance of the devices that will be tested must be identified. It should also be determined if the device can be accessed by any internal member of the company or only administrators and authorized users.
System Baseline Definition –
Gathering information about the system before the vulnerability assessment is carried out is the second step. A review should be conducted in this step to determine whether the device has open ports and note the services and processes that should not be opened. Understanding of the approved software and drivers along with the basic configuration of each device should also be acquired.
Perform the Vulnerability Scan –
Using the appropriate policy on the scanner to get results is the next step. Although, before the assessment has started it is recommended to search for a compliance requirement to the business and understand what is the best time to perform the scan. Security professionals should also determine the client industry context and determine whether they will perform the scan all at once or if segmentation is needed.
Vulnerability Assessment Report Creation –
The last and possibly the most important step is to create a report. The value during the recommendation phase it is important to pay attention to details and try to add extra value. Real value can be generated for everyone from the final report given recommendations are added by security experts based on the initial assessment goals.
Below are the details an in-depth vulnerability report must have include:
- The name of the vulnerability.
- The date of discovery.
- A detailed description of the vulnerability.
- The score according to the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database.
- The details of the affected systems.
- The details of the process to correct the vulnerability.
- A blank field for the vulnerability owner, the time taken for correcting it, the next revision, and the countermeasures between the final solutions.
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