What is vulnerability management?
Vulnerability management is the process of identifying, assessing, remediating and mitigating security vulnerabilities in software and computer systems. It’s a critical part of managing cybersecurity risk in IT environments: Vulnerabilities that aren’t found and fixed can expose an organization to damaging cyber attacks and data breaches.
A typical vulnerability management process involves continuously scanning IT assets for vulnerabilities, evaluating the risks of ones that are found, and addressing the vulnerabilities in a prioritized order based on risk severity. The goals of vulnerability management include reducing attack surfaces, improving an organization’s security posture, meeting regulatory compliance requirements and minimizing business risks.
Vulnerability management isn’t the same thing as patch management. They do overlap, but there are differences between the two processes. Vulnerability management takes a big-picture view to identify vulnerabilities and then resolve them across IT systems, while patch management provides a tactical fix for known bugs and security holes in software through the installation of patches…
