Only the truly committed ever reach the summit of anything. This sentiment holds true for vulnerability management. An organization cannot reach the summit without a serious commitment to fund and staff the program appropriately across the organization. Reaching ML:5 means tying the program to the business. Everyone must be aligned with the metrics and...

The digital threat landscape is always changing. This year is an excellent (albeit extreme) example. With the help of Dimensional Research, Tripwire found out that 58% of IT security professionals were more concerned about the security of their employees’ home networks than they were before the outbreak of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19). Slightly fewer...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s May 2020 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-884 on Wednesday, May 13th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs None of the vulnerabilities resolved this month have been publicly disclosed or exploited according to Microsoft. CVE Breakdown by Tag ...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s April 2020 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-880 on Wednesday, April 15th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2020-0935 A vulnerability in the OneDrive for Windows desktop application could allow an attacker to overwrite a targeted file and...

Why leveraging live environment simulations and putting ICS tools to the test is the best way to evaluate their fitness. Track and field was one of my favorite sports growing up. I didn’t begin competitively participating until I was a teenager, but I was instantly hooked once I started. Why? Because the clock didn’t lie. The tape measure didn’t lie....

The climb is getting steeper, but thanks to hard work, vision and insight are much keener. At ML:4, all assets are scanned by a combination of agent and remote scans on a normal cadence. This will generate a lot of data dictated by threat and patch priority. Thousands of new vulnerabilities are released each year, and no company or product can detect...

Trust, respect, understanding. These are all two-way relationships that must be earned over time. Whilst someone being hired in a senior position will likely already have a certain level of each, part of your job is to continuously cultivate all three of these elements with colleagues no matter your grade. When working within a cybersecurity practice,...

As a security consultant, I’m not going into an environment to design and build an organization’s network from the ground up in most situations. For the majority of the time, I’m working with legacy environments where some old technologies might be phasing out and newer ones joining the mix of solutions. In the case of one environment I went to, for...

On January 7th, MITRE released ATT&CK for Industrial Control Systems, a taxonomy of real-world cyber adversarial behavior targeting ICS or industrial control systems. These systems operate critical infrastructure in manufacturing and utility industries, and they are popular targets in financial and espionage motivated attacks. Recent high-profile...

Most industrial organizations are behind the curve when it comes to cybersecurity, facing mounting complexities like the IIoT, the skills gap and the IT/OT divide. But what about industrial organizations that are already taking steps in the right direction and need to know what awaits them on the horizon? What practical next steps can your organization...

Since the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on 25 May 2018, organizations and even private citizens have globally begun to re-assess what it means to ‘take security seriously’ and to better understand the massive difference between security and privacy. What you may not be familiar with is the Network and Information...

ML:3 is base camp, and getting here means you have reached a level that others have only dreamed about. At this level, the VM program is very good, and your visibility into threats to the environment is much better than it has ever been. Prioritizing Asset Assessment The biggest change at this level is the focus on the breadth of assessment going on...

Whilst working for a management consultancy, I learned a lot more about industrial control systems (ICS) than I ever imagined I would. In many cases, this wasn’t from working on them directly; it was from simply speaking to the technicians and reading documentation. Oftentimes, we have the false belief that our systems are safe from compromise because...

As we begin our new decade of the 2020s, we can look back at the last 30 odd years and examine the collaboration between technology and our daily lives. If you think of your day-to-day, it’s easy to see how much our society relies on technology. Consider our smart devices such as mobile phones, watches, even homes. However, what about the technology...

The path is starting to get steeper now as we climb to ML2. It is time to start defining a vulnerability management program with objectives and goals. This program is expected to grow and evolve over time as the organization grows and evolves. Document the requirements Start by documenting what is in place now and what objections the organization is...

As we wind down 2019, it is a great time to think about your vulnerability management plans for the coming year. The five W’s can help guide our efforts as we resolve to improve our digital security for the coming new year. What Is Vulnerability Management? Vulnerability assessments are useful for detecting security issues within your environment. By...

The time at ML:0 can be eye-opening form many organizations. There are generally a lot of assets discovered that are new or had been forgotten about. Almost every organization discovers their own Methuselah; this is the system that has been around forever and performs some important tasks but has not been...

Just as you would map a hike or climb by creating waypoints you plan to hit each day, you must plan your vulnerability management process by creating similar goals. We call these goals Maturity Levels, from ML0 to ML5, as we defined them in the last blog. You have your asset inventory from an open-source tool, asset tracking database or maybe your...

The evolution of the cyber threat landscape highlights the emerging need for organizations to strengthen their ability to identify, analyze and evaluate cyber risks before they evolve into full-fledged security incidents. When it comes to cyber risk mitigation, the terms “patch management” and “vulnerability management” are used as if they are...