The Ultimate Guide to Vulnerability Management

What is risk based vulnerability management?

Risk-based vulnerability management (RBVM) is a modern approach to prioritizing and addressing vulnerabilities based on the specific risks they pose to an organization. Unlike traditional vulnerability management – which often focuses on the sheer number of vulnerabilities – RBVM goes further by incorporating additional context, such as asset criticality, exploitability, and real-world threat intelligence.

At its core, RBVM evaluates vulnerabilities not in isolation but as part of a broader risk profile. It emphasizes the importance of aligning remediation efforts with the organization’s risk tolerance, business objectives, and overall security posture. By prioritizing vulnerabilities based on their actual risk rather than theoretical severity, organizations can better protect critical systems and data.

Traditional VM vs. RBVM

The key difference between traditional vulnerability management and RBVM lies in how priorities are set. Traditional approaches often treat all vulnerabilities equally, focusing on patching or remediating as many as possible without considering their relevance or impact. This can lead to wasted effort on low-risk issues while critical vulnerabilities remain unaddressed.

RBVM, on the other hand, is more strategic. It leverages automation, threat intelligence, and contextual data to identify which vulnerabilities are actively being targeted or have the highest potential to disrupt operations. This shift from quantity to quality ensures organizations are spending their time and resources where they matter most.

Vulnerability management vs. vulnerability assessment

Generally, vulnerability assessments are a portion of a complete VM program. Organizations will likely run multiple vulnerability assessments to get more information on their overall VM action plan. 

Stay ahead with continuous vulnerability monitoring

Threats and attackers are constantly changing, just as organizations are constantly adding new mobile devices, cloud services, networks, and applications to their environments. With every change comes the risk that a new hole has been opened in a network, allowing attackers to slip in and walk out with all the data they want.

Every time a new partner, employee, client, or customer comes aboard, the organization is exposed to new vulnerabilities, exploits, and threats. Protecting your organization from these threats requires a VM solution that can keep up with and adapt to all of these changes as well as keep attackers out.

As these personnel come onto the network, IT asset management (ITAM) plays a crucial role in effective vulnerability monitoring. A clear and up-to-date inventory of all assets—whether they are on-premises, in the cloud, or part of remote work setups—enables organizations to pinpoint where vulnerabilities may exist.

By aligning asset management practices with a VM program, organizations gain visibility into what needs protecting, how critical those assets are, and the best steps for mitigating risk. This foundational element ensures VM efforts remain targeted and efficient in the face of constant change.

4-step vulnerability management process

Each stage of the VM workflow plays a crucial role in reducing risk and enhancing overall security posture. By leveraging tools like vulnerability scanners, alinging with risk-based frameworks, and validating vulnerabilities, organizations can constantly refine their efforts to focus on addressing the threats that matter most while increasing operational resilience.

Step 1: Perform vulnerability scan

At the heart of a typical VM tool is a vulnerability scanner. The scan consists of four stages:

1. Scan network-accessible systems by pinging them or sending them TCP/UDP packets
2. Identify open ports and services running on scanned systems
3. If possible, remotely log in to systems to gather detailed system information
4. Correlate system information with known vulnerabilities

Vulnerability scanners are able to identify a variety of systems running on a network, such as laptops and desktops, virtual and physical servers, databases, firewalls, switches, printers, etc. Identified systems are probed for different attributes: operating system, open ports, installed software, user accounts, file system structure, system configurations, and more.

This information is then used to associate known vulnerabilities to scanned systems. In order to perform this association, vulnerability scanners will use a vulnerability and exploit database that contains a list of publicly known vulnerabilities.

Properly configuring vulnerability scans is an essential component of a VM solution. Vulnerability scanners can sometimes disrupt the networks and systems that they scan. If available network bandwidth becomes very limited during an organization’s peak hours, then vulnerability scans should be scheduled to run during off hours.

If some systems on a network become unstable or behave erratically when scanned, they might need to be excluded from vulnerability scans, or the scans may need to be fine-tuned to be less disruptive.

Step 2: Vulnerability assessment

After vulnerabilities are identified, they need to be assessed so the risks posed by them are dealt with appropriately and in accordance with an organization’s vulnerability management program framework. VM platforms will provide different risk ratings and scores for vulnerabilities, such as Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) scores.

These scores are helpful in telling organizations which vulnerabilities they should focus on first, but the true risk posed by any given vulnerability depends on some other factors beyond those out-of-the-box risk ratings and scores.

RBVM takes vulnerability assessment a step further by factoring in the criticality of the affected assets, the exploitability of the vulnerability, and the potential impact on the organization if it were exploited. It aligns VM efforts with an organization’s unique risk tolerance and operational priorities, ensuring resources are allocated to address the most pressing threats first. By integrating RBVM principles, organizations can move beyond static scoring systems and develop a dynamic, context-aware strategy that keeps their most valuable assets secure.

Like any security tool, vulnerability scanners aren’t perfect. Their vulnerability detection false-positive rates, while low, are still greater than zero. Performing vulnerability validation with penetration testing tools and techniques helps weed out false-positives so organizations can focus their attention on dealing with real vulnerabilities.

The results of vulnerability validation exercises or full-blown penetration tests can often be an eye-opening experience for organizations that thought they were secure enough or that the vulnerability wasn’t that risky.

Step 3: Prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities

Once a vulnerability has been validated and deemed a risk, the next step is prioritizing how to treat that vulnerability:

• Remediation: Fully fixing or patching a vulnerability so it can’t be exploited – this is ideal.
• Mitigation: Lessening the likelihood and/or impact of a vulnerability being exploited. This is sometimes necessary when a proper fix or patch isn’t yet available for an identified vulnerability. 
• Acceptance: Taking no action to fix or otherwise lessen the likelihood/impact of a vulnerability being exploited. This is typically justified when a vulnerability is deemed a low risk, and the cost of fixing the vulnerability is substantially greater than the cost incurred by an organization if the vulnerability were to be exploited.

When remediation activities are completed, it's best to run another vulnerability scan to confirm that the vulnerability has been fully resolved.

However, not all vulnerabilities need to be fixed. For example, if an organization’s vulnerability scanner has identified vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash Player on their computers, but they completely disabled Adobe Flash Player from being used in web browsers and other client applications, then those vulnerabilities could be considered sufficiently mitigated by a compensating control.

Step 4: Continuous vulnerability management

Performing regular and continuous vulnerability assessments enables organizations to understand the speed and efficiency of their VM program over time. VM tools typically have different options for exporting and visualizing vulnerability scan data with a variety of customizable reports and dashboards.

Not only does this help IT teams easily understand which remediation techniques will help them fix the most vulnerabilities with the least amount of effort, or help security teams monitor vulnerability trends over time in different parts of their network, but it also helps support organizations’ compliance and regulatory requirements.

Vulnerability management automation

A VM system can help automate the VM process, streamlining the identification, assessment, and treatment of vulnerabilities across an organization’s attack surface. These systems typically use a combination of vulnerability scanners and endpoint agents to inventory systems on a network, identify vulnerabilities, and evaluate their potential impact. Let’s take a look into how VM automation can play into different scenarios.

Advanced testing

To ensure vulnerabilities are addressed effectively, organizations can integrate automated VM with broader cybersecurity practices like penetration testing and breach and attack simulation (BAS). Penetration testing validates vulnerabilities by simulating real-world attacks, providing critical insights into their exploitability and potential business impact.

Similarly, BAS tools help organizations continuously test their defenses, offering automated, scalable ways to identify weaknesses and evaluate the strength of existing controls.

Collaborative teams

VM automation can also benefit from incorporating the methodologies of red team, blue team, and purple team exercises. Automated tools can generate actionable data red teams use to simulate offensive tactics and assess vulnerabilities in systems.

This data can then inform blue teams in their efforts to bolster defenses and proactively mitigate risks. Purple teams, acting as a bridge, can leverage automated insights to facilitate collaboration between red and blue teams, ensuring both strategies are refined in real-time.

Exposure management

An automated VM program should not operate in isolation but as part of a broader exposure management strategy. By integrating with attack surface management (ASM) tools, organizations can gain continuous visibility into their dynamic digital footprints, including shadow IT and cloud environments. ASM ensures that automated systems scan the right assets, even as new devices, applications, and services are added.

Implementing risk-based prioritization into exposure management

Integrating risk-based prioritization into an exposure management program is essential for focusing efforts on the vulnerabilities and threats that matter most. By aligning VM with business objectives and risk tolerance, organizations can optimize resources while effectively reducing their attack surface. Let’s dive into how you can make risk-based prioritization a core component of an exposure management strategy:

• Establish an accurate asset inventory, including on-premises, cloud, and remote systems. Knowing what you have is crucial for understanding which assets are most critical and need prioritized protection.
• Incorporate threat intelligence to identify vulnerabilities being actively exploited in the wild. This data helps contextualize risks and ensures your prioritization aligns with real-world threats.
• Assign a business impact score to each asset based on its role in your organization. Teams should first address vulnerabilities in systems supporting critical operations or sensitive data.
• Integrate risk ratings – like CVSS scores – with additional risk factors, such as exploitability, likelihood of attack, and potential impact on your organization.
• Leverage automation and analytics to correlate data from vulnerability scans, asset management systems, and threat intelligence feeds. Advanced analytics can help identify trends and highlight high-risk areas more efficiently.
• Regularly conduct vulnerability validation through penetration testing or BAS to ensure identified risks are real and actionable.

Latest patch updates, vulnerabilities, and exploits

• See the most recent patches reported by the Rapid7 experts on the Patch Tuesday blog
• Search the Vulnerability & Exploit Database for updated risks 
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