How to perform a vulnerability assessment? The solid plan

What is a vulnerability assessment?

Vulnerability assessment plays the most critical role in risk management, within a software testing and quality assurance process designed to identify and address any existing or potential security weaknesses in the information systems, including your networks, applications, hardware, software, etc. By classifying and prioritizing these risks, we can develop effective remediation strategies for a safe digital environment.

How to conduct a vulnerability assessment?

Defining and planning the scope of testing

Always plan ahead. This is not excessive but instead realistic.

Before embarking on security testing, the scope of security testing must be carefully defined and planned. Defining and planning the scope of security testing involves determining what needs to be tested, how it should be tested, and the timeline for performing the security tests. The information gathered during this process will inform the security assessment strategy and determine who will have access to the system or application being tested. It’s also fundamental to consider a predefined set of rules that govern security testing so that testers can stay within acceptable boundaries while conducting the security tests. Achieving a successful security assessment requires careful planning, consideration, and know-how.

At this stage, you should have figured out all the below, including but not limited to:

• Identify the most trustworthy place to store your most sensitive data.

• Discover hidden sources of data.

• Identify which servers run mission-critical applications.

• Identify which systems and networks to access.

• Review all ports and processes and check for misconfigurations.

• Map out the entire IT infrastructure, digital assets, and devices.

Vulnerability identification

Launch a vulnerability scan of your IT infrastructure, then make a detailed list of the underlying security threats. One of the most important factors in this step is getting automated vulnerability scanning and a manual penetration test to validate findings and minimize false positives. Some of the automated vulnerability scanning tools that might help you are Acunetix, beSECURE, OpenVAS, and Nexpose.

To effectively address security threats in your IT system, it is necessary to initiate security testing. Doing this involves conducting an automated vulnerability scan and a manual penetration test of your IT infrastructure to get comprehensive security insights. Fortunately, powerful automated vulnerability scanning tools available off-the-shelves, such as Acunetix, beSECURE, OpenVAS, Nexpose, etc., can be used to access and give valuable information on the security risk postures of your systems and networks.

Analysis

Thanks to technological advancement, all scanning tools provide detailed results and in-depth reports allowing you to create the right security plan and make informed decisions on what needs to be done for you to protect your IT infrastructure against future attacks.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) is a standardized security rating system designed to provide an easy way to evaluate security vulnerabilities and is often used by most scanning tools. The numerical score derived from this system can be used to compare security threats and prioritize security testing. It offers valuable insight into the risk factors associated with each vulnerability, including severity, urgency, potential damage, and risk. As such, it provides the development teams with the information they need to make timely decisions on which vulnerabilities need to be addressed first. Access to this trusted qualitative measure helps security teams deploy the utmost security strategy for the products/projects.

Treating the vulnerabilities

Once vulnerability assessment has successfully identified the threats, it’s time to address and get them fixed, which either remediation or mitigation can do. Remediation involves fixing security issues, either by removing security threats or implementing security measures to protect against them. The process involves changing the security state of a system to ensure that identified gaps are minimized or eliminated. Doing this may include patching, updating security configurations, disabling unused applications and services, encrypting data and communications, etc.

Mitigation, on the other hand, involves accepting the risk as part of normal operations and attempting to minimize its impact. Both approaches have their own advantages; mindfully consider which is best suited to resolve the breaches and ensure optimal security of your system moving forward.

What happens if a patch isn’t available to fix newly discovered vulnerabilities? In these scenarios, remediation and mitigation shall be applied parallelly. While mitigation is the effective means of temporarily blocking the issue/ problem/ error, the developers need to eventually remediate threats properly with the appropriate technology fixes to bring the system up to an acceptable security level.

If you don’t have the necessary resources to do it yourself, don’t hesitate to seek help from third-party outsourcing vendors – SHIFT ASIA, the leading Offshore IT services provider.  Contact the SHIFT ASIA support team for your assistance. Cybersecurity might seem like a daunting task, but with the right tools and partners by your side, you can definitely keep your business safe from harm