Vulnerability management is crucial for an organization to identify security vulnerabilities and, subsequently, avoid them. It helps the organization maintain its security posture and run the business smoothly. With new vulnerabilities emerging now and then, manually taking care of vulnerability management becomes tedious. The entire lifecycle comprises different segments, like vulnerability data assessment and approval. Furthermore, based on this data, the organizations must also work on mitigation plans that require approval and regular follow-ups.
Not all companies have the extensive resources to manage the vulnerability. However, even if a company has all the manual resources, it is crucial to automate the process because of its repetitive and extensive nature. Therefore, the solution to the problem lies in vulnerability management automation.
The Role Of Automation In Vulnerability Management
Vulnerability management typically consists of four steps: identification, evaluation, treatment, and reporting. Manually engaging in these four steps extends the time duration and provides the attackers the time to carry significant damage to the organization. Therefore, it is crucial to speed up the process. With the addition of automation in the vulnerability management cycle, it is possible to speed up the entire process and reduce the vulnerability gap within the organization.
Furthermore, automation ensures no additional workforce making it possible for the organization to take care of the security with the existing resources. For example, manually checking for an unknown IP address in What Is My IP makes sense in the home network. However, in an office setup with a limited workforce, the right software can help the security team to identify any anomaly in the IP address of the devices in the network quickly.
In addition, automation also streamlines the workflow and enhances the productivity of the IT staff. The automation staff can easily handle the cybersecurity monitoring, freeing the IT team members to work on other vital jobs. Here is how automation benefits the vulnerability management cycle for an organization.
Streamlines The Workflow
Vulnerability management requires patching, which again houses many steps. Primarily, it identifies the fixes of the vulnerability, followed by its implementation. The process occurs through multiple communication between the IT and security teams.
Automation in this process can streamline the workflow by helping the team gather necessary data while keeping the communication loop open without going back and forth.
Network Flow Restrictions
It is not easy to fix an issue immediately after identifying it. The process of working on a vulnerability requires time. However, ensuring that the organization’s asset stays safe during this period is critical. Leveraging automation can take care of this. Automation is a valuable tool to restrict the network traffic in the vulnerable asset of the organization while the team fixes the problems.
Vulnerability Scanning
The first step in vulnerability management includes vulnerability scanning to discover the vulnerability. Automation can help the organization with a vulnerability scanner to identify vulnerabilities in numerous systems, networks, apps, and devices. Most software, after the scan, provides a detailed report to the users with the identified vulnerability and risk ranking. It is helpful because sometimes, manual scanning of vulnerabilities fails to identify all the problematic loopholes.
Quick Security
Automation helps businesses roll out patches quickly and close the organization’s security holes. Also, it is possible to automate the QA, which again fastens the testing and implementation process of the patch.
Why Automation Investment Is Must For Vulnerability Management?
As discussed above, automation is critical in bringing efficiency and effectiveness to the vulnerability management cycle. It frees the human analyst from monotonous work. Furthermore, it accurately identifies and then prioritizes the vulnerabilities for quick action.
Also, it can convert the complex process of vulnerability management into a simple cycle by streamlining the workflow, which is vital for network security. The traditional approach to vulnerability management is resource intensive and also prone to human error. In addition, the dynamic cyberscape can overwhelm the IT security teams with threat intelligence data pouring in almost daily. Automation in vulnerability management can help solve these problems.
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Automation can give rise to significant expenses. Therefore, businesses that want to employ automation should identify their most important assets and use them to balance costs. In addition, big and small firms alike should invest in automation because no one is immune to cyber-attacks. Most of the attackers consider start-ups and SMEs.
