The Five Stages of Vulnerability Management

A key to having a good information security program within your organization is having a good vulnerability management program. Most, if not all, regulatory policies and information security frameworks advise having a strong vulnerability management program as one of the first things an organization should do when building their information security program.

The Center for Internet Security specifically lists it as number three in the Top 20 CIS Controls.

Over the years, I’ve seen a variety of different vulnerability management programs and worked with many companies with various levels of maturation in their VM programs. This post will outline the five stages of maturity based on the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and give you an idea as to how to take your organization the next level of maturity. To read the full whitepaper, check out this link.

What is the Capability Maturity Model?

The CMM is a model that helps develop and refine a process in an incremental and definable method.  More information on the model can be found here. The five stages of the CMM are:

Stage 1: Initial

In the Initial stage of a vulnerability management program, there are generally no or minimal processes and procedures. The vulnerability scans are done by a third-party vendor as part of a penetration test or part of an external scan. These scans are typically done from one to four times per year at the request of an auditor or a regulatory requirement.

The vendor who does the audit will provide a report of the vulnerabilities within the organization. The organization will then typically remediate any Critical or High risks to ensure that they remain compliant. The remaining information gets filed away once a passing grade has been given.

As we’ve seen over the (Read more...)