Vulnerabilities in Endpoints and the Damage They Cause
Vulnerabilities are like holes in a fence — malware exploits them and uses these “holes” to enter the organization unnoticed. Once inside, they can access an organization’s resources and move laterally through the network to expand their reach.
The Need for Vulnerability Assessments
All companies have vulnerabilities in their IT environments. Companies use a wide array of software solutions, and these programs can have bugs that might be exploited by an attacker. Every time an organization adds a new system or updates its software, there is the potential that new vulnerabilities will be introduced into its systems.
A vulnerability assessment gives an organization the opportunity to find these vulnerabilities before an attacker does. By performing regular assessments and acting on the results, an organization can dramatically reduce its cyber threat exposure by closing the security gaps that an attacker is most likely to exploit or that pose the greatest threat to the business.
Challenges in Vulnerability Assessment
With a vulnerability assessment, the greatest challenge is ensuring that the vulnerability assessment meets an organization’s needs. For example, a vulnerability scan will likely find more issues than an organization can fix, and prioritization is essential to addressing the most critical threats first. The vulnerability assessment process should be carefully designed and implemented to ensure that it meets the needs of an organization’s risk management program.
Types of Vulnerability Assessments
Vulnerability assessment is a general term for the practice of searching for vulnerabilities in computer systems. Since an organization may have a diverse set of solutions, there are a few different types of vulnerability assessments focused on different areas, including:
- Host Assessment: A host assessment will look for vulnerabilities in the company’s endpoints with a focus on crucial systems.
- Network Assessment: A network assessment ensures that corporate networks have secure policies and security controls in place to prevent unauthorized access to the company’s networks and the systems connected to them.
- Database Assessment: A database assessment inspects a company’s databases for security misconfigurations, unauthorized databases, misclassified data, and similar data security threats.
- Application Assessment: An application assessment tests an organization’s web applications and other software for potentially exploitable vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, buffer overflows, and other common threats.
Vulnerability Assessment Process
Vulnerability assessments are typically considered a four-step process that includes the following:
- Identification: The first step of the vulnerability assessment process is identifying the potential vulnerabilities in an organization’s systems. This typically involves running a vulnerability scanner, which will produce a list of potential vulnerabilities.
- Analysis: In this step, the list of provided vulnerabilities will be further analyzed, either manually or automatically. For example, this analysis might determine if a result is a true threat or false positive or look for a root cause of each vulnerability.
- Prioritization: Most organizations lack the resources to fix every vulnerability, and the ROI of doing so may be low for low-risk vulnerabilities. To maximize the benefit and effectiveness of remediation efforts, vulnerabilities should be prioritized based on their likelihood of exploitation and potential impacts on the business.
- Remediation: After developing a prioritized list, the organization can work on fixing these issues in order. This may involve applying patches or mitigating issues and should include testing to verify that a fix worked.
Vulnerability Assessments vs. Penetration Tests
Vulnerability assessments and penetration tests are both designed to identify vulnerabilities in an organization’s systems. However, they work in very different ways. Some of the key differences include:
- Automated vs. Human-Driven: Vulnerability assessments typically use automated tools to search for vulnerabilities. Penetration tests are human-driven exercises.
- Broad vs. Deep: Vulnerability scans typically try to identify all vulnerabilities in operating systems, applications, etc. . Penetration testers drill deeper trying to achieve a particular goal and may miss some vulnerabilities.
- Vulnerability Exploitation: Vulnerability assessments typically do not involve the exploitation of discovered vulnerabilities, which can result in false positive detections. Penetration testers may exploit vulnerabilities that they find while exploring an organization’s systems and trying to achieve a particular objective.
In the end, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests are complementary tools, and penetration testers will often begin their assessment with a vulnerability scan.
Vulnerability Management with Check Point
Vulnerability management is a crucial component of a corporate cybersecurity strategy. The ability to find and fix vulnerabilities enables an organization to close off these potential security gaps before they can be exploited by an attacker.
Via an integration with Ivanti, Check Point Harmony Endpoint has expanded its capabilities to include an endpoint security posture management feature. This streamlines vulnerability management by enabling automated vulnerability scanning and one-click remediation across an organization’s IT assets. To learn more and see its capabilities for yourself, sign up for a free demo.
Feedback