This is the first in a three-part blog series by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) for Axonius discussing how vulnerability management can be expanded and simplified by using a cybersecurity asset management solution. Part one of the series focuses on defining the cybersecurity asset management solutions category and includes a summary definition of vulnerability management.
The original Post by Axonius can be found here.
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Security and compliance vendors are always looking to solve problems — sometimes, problems an organization didn’t even know it had. Occasionally, there are problems complicated enough that even when an organization discovers the problem, there isn’t a reasonable solution for it. One of these types of problems is asset management. How can an organization gain and maintain a true accounting of every technology asset in its infrastructure?
Various manual office productivity tools have existed for some time. For example, glorified spreadsheets have been used to catalog devices and user assets — with marginal success. However, these methods have always been inaccurate, laborious, and prone to human error. Further, these methods don’t allow asset owners and business decision-makers to understand the potential cybersecurity impacts associated with any specific asset, let alone see the interconnections between assets and the downstream risks of a system vulnerability.
Cybersecurity Asset Management: Key Use Cases
Using a cybersecurity asset management tool to understand the assets in an enterprise environment is one of the first steps in vulnerability and risk management processes. Vulnerability management, which is the process of finding, assessing, remediating, and mitigating security weaknesses for known assets, gives enterprises the ability to assess the status and risk of unknown devices. Vulnerability assessment, the process of identifying vulnerabilities in assets, is often used interchangeably with vulnerability management. However, assessments are just tools that inform vulnerability management which, in turn, is an input to enterprise risk management.
As a main component of cybersecurity asset management, vulnerability management is essential. Yet, vulnerability management is a struggle for most enterprises for three primary reasons:Fortunately for the enterprise, tools exist that can help make sense of the myriad vulnerabilities, simplifying vulnerability management and making it more actionable.
The real-time, comprehensive catalog of assets (and associated data) that cybersecurity asset management tools provide allows enterprises to enhance their vulnerability management approach in multiple ways.