TABLE OF CONTENTS Back in the good old days, the typical approach to vulnerability management was to have the security group identify threats and then toss them to information technology (IT) administrators for remediation. As the number of security threats mounted over the years, this casual approach was no longer viable. In previous chapters, we discussed vulnerability discovery through the use of vulnerability assessment (VA) scanners, patch management, and configuration management tools. However, vulnerability management requires more than just the use of one of these previously mentioned tools.
Vulnerability management is best defined as the overall process of managing the risk presented to an enterprise due to vulnerabilities, whether they are software or hardware related. Vulnerability management ties directly into vulnerability discovery and vulnerability assessment in many ways, and depends greatly on the patch management process as well.
Vulnerability management also includes the grouping of security practices and processes which assist in managing security liabilities, allowing you to integrate vulnerability management into existing information security and IT workflows.
This chapter outlines the building blocks of a vulnerability management program and discusses what s necessary to maintain an effective program.
| Note | Don t assume that large enterprises solve the vulnerability management problem simply by throwing people at it. Regardless of an organization s size, you can t address vulnerability management by adding more people to the team. For example, one large international corporation created a team of more than fifty people dedicated to vulnerability management and patch deployment. Despite having labs dedicated to testing patches and... |
