Vulnerabilities are like doors to your organization’s systems and sensitive data. Threat actors only need one unsecured entrance to progress an attack. A single successful exploitation can flip the switch from business as usual to a devastating data breach that impacts every part of the organization.

Patching and Prioritization Go Hand in Hand

Of course, applying patches to operating systems, applications, and devices is critical to ensuring the security of systems. But vulnerabilities are pervasive — they’re in the Microsoft and Adobe products most of us use everyday, they’re in insecure BYOD devices and remote workers’ home WIFI networks, they’re in web browsers, and they’re in software code — vulnerabilities are everywhere.

Making matters worse, threat actors are getting faster at exploiting vulnerabilities. Today, it only takes about 15 days for an exploit to appear in the wild once a vulnerability is identified. This means security teams have just a small window of time to patch or remediate a system against a new vulnerability.

Vulnerability management teams could patch all day, every day and never even get to most of the vulnerabilities that exist — let alone tackle the new ones popping up. Without timely context on newly disclosed vulnerabilities, these teams face additional challenges in protecting their technologies and systems from compromise. For these teams, real productivity isn’t possible without the ability to prioritize.

Benefits and Examples of Security Intelligence for Vulnerability Management

Positioning security intelligence at the core of your vulnerability management strategy makes it possible to understand where adversaries are investing their time and effort — which empowers you to focus and prioritize your patching. By patching the most-exploited vulnerabilities and the ones that represent actual risk to your business first, you can prevent many attacks before they even happen.

Still, patching is only part of the story. Security intelligence enables teams across your organization to address the many challenges that vulnerabilities present:

• In the age of agile software development, code leaks are common. To protect your brand, you need to know instantly when leaks happen, and what data is compromised.
• You may have a handle on your organization’s top vulnerabilities, but what about the vulnerabilities across your vendors’ systems and software? Without full visibility into your third-party risk, you’re only as strong as your weakest link.
• Some vulnerability exploitations are inevitable, so security operations and response teams need real-time context to rapidly research indicators, respond, and recover.
• Understanding your adversaries’ motivations, capabilities, and go-to exploits requires actionable threat intelligence from outside of your organization.
• To protect your executives, corporate operations, and assets around the world, you need a way to continuously monitor for location-based threats and geopolitical risk in real time.

In this short e-book, explore five ways security intelligence can make vulnerability management more manageable — beyond patching prioritization. Download it now for free and discover how to close vulnerability gaps across your entire ecosystem to reduce uncertainty and risk and better defend your organization.