Vulnerability Management Life Cycle

What is the Vulnerability Management Lifecycle?

The process of managing vulnerabilities is like a cycle that helps spot and fix security vulnerabilities before they can be taken advantage of. It involves setting up what’s at risk within an organization, making a list of all their assets, checking for any security holes, and then dealing with those vulnerabilities to make the systems tougher against cyber-attacks. This process is something every organization should do because it keeps checking the IT setup to find and handle any new risks that pop up. It’s like a continuous health check-up for an organization’s assets to ensure security. A well-run vulnerability management life cycle follows a series of organized steps to ensure everything related to protecting information is as tight as possible. The steps in managing vulnerabilities include:

 1. Pre-Assessment Phase

The pre-assessment phase is like getting ready for a big project. It’s about making plans, figuring out what needs to be checked, and setting up rules to keep information safe. The goal here is to list everything valuable—like the computers, programs, and data—that needs protection and to understand how important each asset is. This helps decide what to protect first and how to go about it. Here’s what’s done in this phase in simple steps:

• Get to know the main activities that make the business run.
• List all the software, data, and services these activities rely on and check the code to ensure it is robust.
• Write down all the essential software and settings that are approved for use.
• Make a detailed list of everything the business owns and decide which parts are most crucial to protect.
• Learn how the company’s system network is set up and draw a map of it.
• Find out what safety features are already being used to protect the network.
• Get to know the company’s rules and ensure they’re being followed properly in everyday work.
• Clearly decide what parts of the company’s network and systems must be checked for safety.

Sort out everything the company owns based on its importance to the business. Decide which items are critical and should be kept an eye on first because of the big impact they would have if they were compromised. Here’s why sorting these things by priority is useful:

• It helps determine what to do if something goes wrong with any important items.
• It allows the company to understand how much risk it can handle.
• It organizes how to decide which items to focus on first based on their importance.

2. Vulnerability Assessment Phase

The vulnerability assessment phase is a very important part of making sure a company’s computer systems are secure. It’s about finding vulnerable spots in the company’s technology setup, including the software that runs on computers, websites, and web servers. The main goal is to detect these vulnerable spots, determine how serious they are, and determine how much risk they pose to the company.

• Check and make sure the physical security (like locks, cameras, etc.) is good.
• Look for any setup mistakes or human slip-ups that could cause security issues.
• Use special software to find weak spots in the computer systems.
• Choose the right kind of security check based on the company’s needs or the rules it must follow.
• Figure out which weak spots are the most important to fix first.
• Figure out which security alerts are false alarms and which are real issues that were missed.
• Ensure the results of the security checks make sense for the company’s needs and tech setup.

3. The Post-Assessment Phase

The post-assessment phase is what happens after evaluating the risks. It’s about taking what you’ve learned from the risk assessment and using it to figure out what to fix first. This phase involves:

• Making a list of what needs to be fixed in order of importance, based on how much impact each issue might have.
• Planning out the steps to fix these issues.
• Learning from the process so you can do better next time.
• Teaching employees about the risks and how to avoid them.

The post-assessment phase includes:

• Risk Assessment: Sort risks into categories, gauge how much damage they could do, and determine how serious and likely they are.
• Remediation: Decide which risks to fix first based on their importance, make a plan to fix them, figure out why they happened, apply the necessary fixes, learn from what happened, and educate the team about these risks.
• Verification: After fixes are applied, check again to ensure the problems are truly fixed, analyze the systems while they’re running, and review all the possible ways an attacker could get in.
• Monitoring: Keep checking for weak spots on a regular basis, fix them as soon as they’re found, and keep an eye out for any signs of unauthorized access. Also, ensure the rules and methods for keeping things secure are followed.

To be continued…

Vulnerability Classification and Assessment Type

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AUTHOR
Pooja Rawat ( )

“ My name is Pooja Rawat. I have done my B.tech in Instrumentation engineering. My hobbies are reading novels and gardening. I like to learn new things and challenges. Currently I am working as a Cyber security Research analyst in Infosectrain. “