Why Choosing the Right VM Tool Matters
Your vulnerability management solution is the fuel that powers the rest of your strategic cybersecurity objectives. Put good in, get good out.
That's why the vulnerability management tool you choose matters. And there are a lot of features that are necessary to protect a modern environment today that weren't on the list before.
Done right, VM provides a stable foundation for cyber hygiene and regulatory compliance. Done wrong, and misaligned tools can slow the process from discovery to remediation, complicating and compromising the most important part of your cybersecurity process: the beginning.
Top Features That Should Be on Your Checklist
If you're looking for a VM solution that can take on the task of protecting a complex digital ecosystem – or a smaller one with a lot of moving parts – here are some essential qualities to bear in mind.
- Comprehensive Asset Discovery & Reconciliation: You can't have a complete vulnerability scan if you have unaccounted for assets. Look for a VM platform where asset reconciliation comes standard; track and correlate assets and the data on them even when their hostname or IP address changes.
- User-Friendly Dashboards & Reporting: Today's teams don't have time to learn one more complicated tool. VM dashboards need to be intuitive out-of-the-box and include automated reporting using the data aggregated by the system.
- Integration with ITSM, SIEM, and EDR Tools: Playing nice with IT Service Management, SIEM, and EDR tools is a must. Many VM platforms give you a lot of vulnerabilities (those endless lists) but leave your overwhelmed SOC to do the rest. That does not need to be the case in 2025. Today's workflow-centric VM solutions can integrate prioritized findings right into your security solutions for immediate, automated results – and a lot less low-level work for your team members.
- Risk-Based Prioritization: Again, a data dump is not what anyone is looking for. Your VM solution should be able to prioritize which vulnerabilities present the highest risk to your organization – automatically – and give your SOCs a place to start. This should not be a step they have to do themselves.
- Cloud and Hybrid Environment Support: RightScale notes that enterprise cloud adoption is over 94% and Gartner predicts that 90% of all organizations will turn to hybrid cloud through 2027. A VM platform that supports cloud and hybrid environments (preferably cloud-native) is increasingly becoming a non-negotiable for modern businesses.
- Compliance Mapping and Audit Reporting: You need to know where you stand and be able to prove it. But it doesn't have to take cycles from your day. Look for a VM solution with compliance mapping and audit reporting built in.
Bonus Features That Add Real Value
When looking to upgrade your VM tool, there is a real opportunity to upscale your whole cybersecurity strategy. Today's VM solutions do more than just find vulnerabilities. With the right one in place, you can offload even more operational burden, get threat intelligence to enhance your context, and assign granular access based on who needs it – and who doesn't.
Look for these bonus features to get the most you can out of your future vulnerability management platform:
- Managed service options: Look for a vendor with experts on-hand that can relieve you of the burden of learning, training, downtime, and potential new hires. Keep the team you have on-hand and invest in managed VM to leverage advice, expertise, and audit management support.
- Context-aware threat intelligence: Vulnerabilities are hardly stand-alone indicators. By choosing a VM platform that enriches findings with threat intelligence – and vice versa – you can get the most out of your investment. These are steps that a SOC (with time on its hands) would take anyway, but often lacks the resources to do. With a managed VM platform, you get peace of mind knowing it's always done.
- Role-based access control: Vulnerabilities are valuable information, especially when it comes to which ones are exploitable and how. Protect this information with a platform that supports role-based access controls.
Questions to Ask Your Vendor
In the course of your buyer's journey, don't forget to speak to vendors directly about things that might not be advertised on a product page. Ask them up front, because when the rubber hits the road (and it's time to start using the platform) you are going to want to know about:
- Customizability: How well can this VM platform adjust to the needs of your specific enterprise?
- Scalability: When you grow, can this VM platform support an expanding attack surface?
- Onboarding support: Do you have a dedicated professional or will questions take a long time to answer – causing lag and slowing your time to ROI.
And to what extent it really reduces your SOC's manual workload, as well as supports compliance goals. Many claim to do these things, but it helps to have a "what does that look like" conversation first.
Aligning These Features With Your Organizational Needs
You want to tailor your VM investment to your organization's size, resources, and risk tolerance. If you are protecting a widely dispersed, highly diversified enterprise, cutting corners with a niche SME solution won't do.
Lastly, understand that there is a lot that a modern VM solution covers that typical VM solutions simply cannot do. They are built for speed, scale, integration and automation – and more.
Explore the Full Guide for a Deeper Evaluation Framework
If you haven't been in the market for vulnerability management lately, it is best to get oriented to the changes and see what's out there before making the final call. Download the Ultimate Vulnerability Management Buyer's Guide to continue your journey.
