There are plenty of vulnerabilities in software and there is plenty of software in companies. This causes hackers to try their luck again and again. What tools do IT administrators need to prioritize closing gaps and weaknesses? Here are 7 solutions.
Closing new vulnerabilities as quickly as possible is a key task for IT security managers. Professional hackers are quickly informed about gaps and often carry out attacks within 24 hours in order to gain access to the company network via these new gateways. Companies of all sizes and industries are in the crosshairs, as cyber criminals are always looking for a good opportunity to cause damage or launch an extortion attack. However, anyone who wants to close security gaps quickly enough needs suitable tools to efficiently assess, fix and report vulnerabilities.
Vulnerabilities pose high risk
In order to properly understand information about vulnerabilities, you first need to know what is meant. Security weaknesses and vulnerability are often confused, but they are not the same thing. According to the National Information Assurance Training and Education Center, vulnerabilities are weaknesses in automated system security processes, administrative and internal control procedures, and IT systems that attackers can exploit through an active exploit.
An attack (threat) can exploit this weakness to gain unauthorized access to information or to interrupt business-critical processes. However, this definition ignores the fact that security weaknesses can affect not only hardware and software, but also all processes and controls that apply in a company. A vulnerability without an associated exploit is "just" a weakness. For the time being, at least.
Knowledge resources to assess risks
There are a large number of vulnerabilities, for example in the area of increasingly complex web applications. Patching is a must. It is therefore important to quickly recognize and identify vulnerabilities and the associated risks, to evaluate them for vulnerability triage and to report them. The following resources can help specialists with this:
- The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) clearly identify vulnerabilities and assess their urgency.
- The free and open Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) indicates the security of a computer system with a value from 0 to 10. Basic metrics evaluate the attack vector (AV), the complexity of the attack (AC), the privileges required (PR) and user interaction (UI). Other factors are the area attacked by the attack (Scope, S) and its effects on the confidentiality (C), integrity (I) and availability (A) of a system. Risk indicators such as exploitability (E), remediation level (RL) and report confidence (RC) change over time. These indices reflect the maturity of the exploit technique, available fixes and the credibility of the vulnerability report. Environment metrics refer to the user's environment and indicate the effect of an attack in this specific context. The final CVSS score ranges from 0.0 (no vulnerability) to 10.0 (critical vulnerability).
- The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) provides a practical guideline for documenting and communicating vulnerabilities. The project is based on a system for reporting vulnerabilities and a predefined process for triaging vulnerabilities, locating them and fixing them. The creators share the documentation of this report internally and externally.
Seven tools and approaches to contain CVE
🔎 Cybersecurity experts in an MDR security operation center can identify CVE trends (Image: Bitdefender).
IT security managers need the right tools and technologies to quickly contain CVE and close gaps according to the urgency. Numerous tools are available, each with its own advantages and disadvantages:
- Configuration Management Databases (CMDB) are the central storage location for information about an organization's assets: software, hardware, systems, products and even employees - as well as the relationship between all of these assets. CMDBs are suitable for managing and documenting configurations. However, they do not provide visibility into processes in the network and possible connectivity with assets that are supposedly not affected on the attack surface.
- Tools for securing cloud assets such as Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs)Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools, Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPPs) and Cloud Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) play an important role, the importance of which increases with each workload moved to the cloud. However, they only monitor a specific area and ignore on-premise systems and the underlying infrastructure.
- Patch Management is essential to keep software, operating systems and applications up to date and secure, to improve the security situation and to reduce vulnerabilities. Patch management as an addition to a security platform automates the deployment of patches and provides a status of the patches that have been deployed. Admins can also patch manually. It is important that patch management manages as many operating system environments as possible.
- Vulnerability scanner are of central importance for finding security weaknesses in advance and evaluating them quickly. Standard scanners monitor networks, hardware, operating systems, applications and databases, among other things. Shodan, which some have dubbed the search engine for the Internet of Things, scans the entire Internet and shares information about "open" devices such as servers, routers, IP cameras or smart TVs. It uncovers open ports and systems. Of course, hackers also use these to quickly launch large-scale automated attacks.
- Risk Assessment Tools of platform solutions for IT security are based on information from extended detection and response (XDR) technologies for monitoring IT activities. They enable IT administrators to identify risks resulting from incorrectly configured operating systems, vulnerable applications or human behavior, among other things.
- A Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) provides precise information about the individual software components of an application and is therefore an important tool for vulnerability management. Based on this inventory, users can understand which elements of a software are vulnerable and need to be improved or updated. This gives IT another basis for assessing security risks and making informed decisions. In an emergency, IT managers can use the SBOM to quickly identify the affected systems and contain the attack. An SBOM also prevents the risk and effects of a supply chain attack.
- The expert view through Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Services is important for the potential prediction of CVEs. Security experts can filter out source information from a large amount of data and identify and monitor CVE trends. This allows experts to anticipate exploits, start threat hunting and identify potential threats.
"Given the increasingly complex attack surface and continuously growing software vulnerabilities, IT managers need a robust strategy for managing vulnerabilities. This should not only include the right tools, but also reliable knowledge resources as a basis for informed decisions," says Jörg von der Heydt, Regional Director DACH at Bitdefender.
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About Bitdefender Bitdefender is a leading global provider of cybersecurity solutions and antivirus software, protecting over 500 million systems in more than 150 countries. Since it was founded in 2001, the company's innovations have consistently ensured excellent security products and intelligent protection for devices, networks and cloud services for private customers and companies. As the supplier of choice, Bitdefender technology is found in 38 percent of security solutions deployed around the world and is trusted and recognized by industry experts, manufacturers and customers alike. www.bitdefender.de