Cybercrimes have increasingly become a matter of concern for companies worldwide. Over the past few years, the rise of big-ticket ransomware attacks and exposure of perilous software supply chain infections has awakened organizations to various digital dangers.
So, the big question is, how to combat the security threats that are on meteoric growth?
The best solution is to adopt a
security vulnerability assessment.
What is Security Vulnerability Assessment?
A vulnerability assessment involves a systematic review of security hazards, which helps identify IT infrastructure’s weaknesses, risks, and vulnerabilities.
When it comes to mitigating vulnerabilities and resolving issues, the collective imperative is to analyze the problem areas before getting them fixed.
A security assessment is critically important to combat the complexities and with an effective vulnerability assessment program, organizations use the tools required to comprehend the probable security weaknesses and enable the protection of systems and data from intruders and unauthorized breaches.
For most organizations, ensuring the safety of devices, networks, applications, and digital assets are part of a broader vulnerability management strategy. It includes an extensive assessment, in-depth processes, and mitigation methods to explore the entire threat spectrum.
Typically, it is conducted regularly. Vulnerability assessment offers a firm assurance in the
security of data, especially when some alterations have been implemented or a new service has been added, or, for that matter, and installation of new equipment has taken place.
Each assessment provides a perspective about the risk in its periphery and suggests solutions to control the risk factors and the evolving threats.
Why Security Vulnerability Assessment Is Necessary?
The perpetual threat of cybercrime has necessitated the demand for vulnerability assessments significantly. They make organizations realize their security defects and contribute towards mitigating them.
Hackers are forever ready to make phishing attacks. As per reports, hackers are at work every 39 seconds. Thus, it is extremely important to be vigilant or complacent to activate hackers’ and cybercriminals’ machinations. Over the period, cybercrimes are fluctuating and thus need ongoing attention.
The ideal solution is to undertake consistent vulnerability assessments to safeguard confidential data, systems, and networks. Furthermore, it helps organizations understand the risk and enables smart decision-making.
To ensure security, companies ought to conduct both external and internal scans of their networks.
According to Gartner (paywall), “Large organizations with thousands of employees, tens of thousands of servers and many operating systems receive hundreds of requests per year to patch thousands of vulnerabilities that cannot be remediated in less than 15 days.”
One of the best reasons security vulnerability assessments are important is because it confirms an enterprise’s management processes and whether it has covered every critical patch through outlined existing remediation.
Why Do Companies Need Vulnerability Assessment?
A vulnerability assessment provides companies insightful details on all types of security discrepancies in their environment.
It paves ways to evaluate the risks associated with the flaws.
This helps organizations have a better knowledge of their security scare, overall weaknesses, and assets.
Moreover, the first thing that strikes us on hearing about a cyber-attack is the security of data. With the right and adequate implementation of security assessments, the safety and security of important data could be easily protected. A security assessment would be helpful to reduce irrelevant expenses and make space and increase the IT budget to invest in other key aspects.
Undoubtedly, data breach causes substantial loss to an organization, which leads to legal hassles and financial hazards. In fact, most of the time companies fail to recover the loss.
Thus, it doesn’t harm to place solid policies and methods to strengthen the entire security position of the organization and this can only be possible with a strategic security vulnerability assessment.
In a nutshell, this would keep the companies aware and, in all likelihood, keep the cyber-criminals at bay.
A CASE STUDY ANALYSIS
To cite an example, let’s take how Zensar conducted a three-pronged vulnerability assessment with port scan and penetration scanning. It determined the security of its offerings to meet customer requests for Brainshark, a leading provider of on-demand presentation solutions, helping customers deliver business interaction across 600+ ranking companies in the market.
While Brainshark knew their systems were secure and could also establish it through their documentation, they still undertook a third-party security vulnerability assessment.
Zensar’s vulnerability assessment procedures were based on the industry’s best practices that included tests for SQL injection, cookie manipulation, access control weakness, session state, and cross-site scripting.
The focus of the test was to identify the host and application security concerns. Upon completing the tests and assessments, Brainshark expressed satisfaction and was confident enough in their ability and solution. They knew their security posture was highly protected and secure.
Types of Vulnerability Assessments:
Vulnerability assessments unearth a variety of system and network vulnerabilities. This indicates the reliability of the assessment process, which is implemented with different tools, scanners, and methods that helps discover the vulnerabilities, risks, and threats.
Network-based assessment scanning: It is used to determine the presumptive network security attacks. This kind of scanning can also detect the vulnerable systems on wired as well as wireless networks.
Host-based scans: It is easy to locate the vulnerabilities in servers or other network hosts with host-based scanning. This type of scanning provides visibility into the configuration settings and legacy systems.
Database scans: Database scans ascertain the weak points in a database to preclude malefic attacks.
Application Scans: It examines websites to identify and recognize software vulnerabilities and inaccurate configurations in network or web applications.
Summing Up
Organizations need to be watchful every minute and ensure the security posture is rigorous, which is only possible with security vulnerability assessments. Based on this criterion, understanding company risks gets simplified in turn preventing intrusions and threats.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What Are the Advantages of Security Vulnerability Assessment?
There are several advantages attached to security vulnerability assessments. To put it precisely, it can help identify the vulnerabilities before cybercriminals do and determine the level of risk.
Undoubtedly, opting for vulnerability assessment would save a lot of time and money and mitigate the risk and prevent the irrelevant expenditure that follows after the cyber-attacks.
What Are the Disadvantages of Security Vulnerability Assessment?
While vulnerability assessments are highly advisable, it has its share of drawbacks which cannot be ignored. One of the primary limitations of vulnerability assessment is that it does not hint at every vulnerability that exists. Moreover, it sometimes signals false positives too.