An acceptable risk level can be achieved and maintained through vulnerability discovery, auditing,
prioritization, remediation and reporting in the context of your business environment. Security and IT teams
are however inundated by the many hundreds if not thousands of vulnerabilities which exist in a typical
organization at any point in time. The complexity and iterative nature of vulnerability management – having
to continuously maintain risks at acceptable levels – can overwhelm team members, leaving them dispirited
and with little time to work on more inspiring projects. As a result, risks either remain undiscovered or, if
discovered, unmanaged. To protect your business, it’s therefore absolutely critical to accomplish the
vulnerability management program’s objectives, in a timely, operationally effective and cost-efficient
manner.
In addition, with the increase in regulatory risk, an organization’s vulnerability management program should
aim to help the business meet its regulatory and compliance requirements and reduce the effort associated
with conducting security audits.
To achieve this, it is incumbent upon organizations to maintain a comprehensive view of assets and
vulnerabilities in their environment. These vulnerabilities exist in critical business systems hosted on the
corporate network, on remote-user machines, on mobile devices and within virtual and cloud environments.
As operating systems, applications and network devices are all subject to inherent vulnerabilities, the extent
of cover must be all-inclusive to ensure that no weak links exist for adversaries to compromise.
