What is Vulnerability Management?

Vulnerability management is the cyclical practice of identifying, classifying, prioritizing, remediating, and mitigating software vulnerabilities. It's an ongoing process that helps organizations maintain security as new vulnerabilities are discovered.

Vulnerability Management Lifecycle

1. Discovery

Asset inventory
Vulnerability scanning
Penetration testing
Bug bounty programs

2. Assessment

Vulnerability validation
False positive elimination
Context gathering

3. Prioritization

CVSS scoring
Business impact analysis
Exploitability assessment
Asset criticality

4. Remediation

Patching
Configuration changes
Compensating controls
Risk acceptance

5. Verification

Rescan after remediation
Confirm fixes
Update documentation

6. Reporting

Metrics and KPIs
Trend analysis
Compliance reporting

Prioritization Factors

CVSS base score
Exploit availability
Asset criticality
Network exposure
Data sensitivity
Compensating controls

Tools and Solutions

Scanners

Nessus
Qualys
Rapid7 InsightVM
OpenVAS

Aggregation/Management

Kenna Security
Nucleus
Vulcan Cyber

Key Metrics

Mean time to remediate (MTTR)
Vulnerability density
Patch compliance rate
Risk reduction over time