Governance, risk management and compliance
How do you protect your business from software vulnerabilities?
Challenge
A company in the insurance industry implemented a vulnerability scanner in its infrastructure as part of Vulnerability Management. Instead, exception and deviation management was done in Excel. Unfortunately, this approach proved ineffective with the challenges it faced.This is because it focused the security team solely on vulnerability identification, not remediation or remediation.
Vulnerability Management, when combined with other tactics, helps minimize the risk of threats. Done in a comprehensive manner, it is a process that involves fully identifying, assessing and dealing with security vulnerabilities that may exist in operating systems and the software that runs on them.
Why couldn’t the organization cope with this task? This was due to the following reasons:
- Lack of prioritization of vulnerabilities, i.e., determining which ones should be closed due to their relevance to the business context
- Lack of backlog management.
- Lack of exception and deviation management.
- Lack of measuring the effectiveness of the process.
Solution
To deal with the challenges comprehensively, it is necessary to use tools that not only leverage the advantages of vulnerability scanners, but also address the issues mentioned earlier.
Archer, which offers Integrated Risk Management (IRM) mechanisms, will excel here. Vulnerability Management, on the other hand, is available in the IT Security Vulnerability Program module.
Effects
The use of Archer as an organizing and overseeing tool for the Vulnerability Management process has allowed the organization to:
- Facilitate control and management by standardizing the process;
- Supporting the process in a single tool from start to finish;
- Speeding up the handling of vulnerabilities by automating the Vulnerability Management process and thereby relieving the security team;
- Manage exceptions and deviations by implementing appropriate paths for handling them;
- Reducing the task load by involving only the right people in the next steps of the process;
- Providing business context to the vulnerability handling process, so we can easily prioritize them based on defined risks and adopted SLA levels;
- Monitoring the effectiveness of the process through continuous measurement of defined KPI parameters.
Effective and efficient vulnerability management requires not only thoughtful actions organized into a coherent process, but also equipping the organization with the right support tool, such as Archer.
