Mastering Cyber Resilience with Vulnerability Management

If you believe a vulnerability in your organization has been exploited and you are the target of a cyberattack, submit our urgent cybersecurity incident form. Our team of experts will respond within 15 minutes and immediately begin working with you to contain and recover from the attack.

In Entara’s fifth webinar of 2023, our experts, Raum Sandoval and McKaila Posey, discussed what Vulnerability Management as a Service (VMaaS) is and how it can improve your business’ cybersecurity posture. Read on to learn more about VMaaS and check out the recording below to hear some great questions from our audience members!

What is Vulnerability Management as a Service?

Vulnerability Management as a Service or VMaaS is a long-term service that includes regular scans of your environment, including workstations, servers, and networking appliances, to identify risks and vulnerabilities that may expose you to ransomware or a cyberattack. 

Vulnerabilities identified include:

• Updates in systems and software not being correctly patched
• Zero Day vulnerability exploits
• Misconfigured security settings
• Changes in vendor or community security standards

How does VMaaS Work?

VMaaS is performed by our engineers through a four-step cycle. We use a multifaceted scoring system to identify a vulnerability’s priority and impact on your environment. This allows for a dynamic remediation approach that prioritizes the items most likely to be exploited by an attacker quicker. 

The first step is to find the vulnerabilities. This is done through multiple scans of a client’s environment:

One-time Vulnerability Scans:

The goal of a one-time vulnerability scan is to capture the vulnerabilities in your environment at the point time of scanning.  

Often done in response to a specific event or as a compliance requirement, a one-time scan will find vulnerabilities that need to be addressed, including updating configurations and policies within your existing tool stack, to harden your security posture. The scan will inspect your workstations, servers, Active Directory, and network appliances to identify vulnerabilities on your network. The result is a report with remediations and recommendations to reduce the number of vulnerabilities in your environment, helping you better understand the gaps in your security and move forward on your vulnerability management journey.  

Offensive Security Assessment:

An OSA is performed in addition to traditional infrastructure penetration testing and vulnerability scanning. It is an in-depth security evaluation where the testers have full visibility and knowledge of the system that they are testing. The objective is to provide a complete review of your Active Directory and Microsoft 365 environment, gather in-depth information on your current security standpoint, and identify vulnerabilities that an attacker could take advantage of to breach your environment. Steps taken may include identifying vulnerable folder and file permissions, object remnants, gaps in configurations, and more.  

Pentesting:

Penetration testing, or pentesting, attempts to exploit the vulnerabilities in a system to determine whether unauthorized access or other malicious activity is possible. This service also identifies which flaws pose a threat to the application and measures the severity of each. Pentests are meant to show how damaging a flaw could be in a real attack rather than find every flaw in a system.

What are some of the benefits of VMaaS?

Enhanced Security:

Vulnerability management reduces the risks of cyberattacks because it identifies known security risks before attackers can. It also allows for continuous monitoring to identify vulnerabilities in real time.

Compliance standards:

In order to meet certain compliance standards, you may need to have certain types of cybersecurity protections in place, including VMaaS. Having this security process in place improves your security posture, which can assist you with meeting compliance standards and even qualifying for cyber insurance.  

Increase visibility:

Vulnerability management allows for visibility into security risks that your business faces. It also allows you to understand how effective current security measures are and what can be done to improve protection.  

Save time and money

Outsourcing vulnerability management saves your IT team time and money by increasing operational efficiency and reducing the burden of owning and maintaining hardware and software updates.

Data breaches can cost a business tons of money in damages and ruin its reputation. With routine scans and constant monitoring for vulnerabilities, a business can help prevent cyberattacks.

Check out the full recording and follow us on social media to be the first to know when registration opens for our next webinar! If you are interested in learning more about out VMaaS service, click here.