Vulnerability Management and SOAR
18.10.2019
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Being one of the most important practices in cyber security, vulnerability management is a rather involved process that requires your time and resources. In this article, we will take a closer look at how SOAR solutions can help you in the process of vulnerability management.
You must have heard the following saying: A chain is only as strong as weakest link. This basic tenet of security is manifested in cyber security in the form of vulnerabilities. In other words, your organization’s security posture is as good as your vulnerabilities. By definition, a vulnerability is an inadequacy or weakness in your systems that can be (and if you wait long enough, definitely will be) exploited by an attacker in order to gain unauthorized access. That is why you must scan vulnerabilities and address as soon as possible in order to keep your organization safe. With the vulnerability management practices, your cyber security team identifies and alleviates the vulnerabilities of your defence.
It is possible to say that vulnerabilities are the openings on your fence that protects you from malicious attackers and data thieves. If you don’t fix these openings, almost anyone can get in and steal valuable data from you, or even lock you outside. In addition, the trend amongst hackers today is the stealthy attacks. Thus, it is quite possible to fail to notice an intruder for a long period of time. In other words, someone might gain unauthorized access to your systems through vulnerabilities in the defences and you might not even notice them. That is why vulnerability management is one of the pillars of cyber security practices.
SOAR (or Security Orchestration, Automation and Response) is the term that refers to the union of three different branches of cyber security practices: security orchestration and automation, security incident response and threat intelligence. With this mighty union, it is possible to manage massive amounts of security data and incidents gathered from numerous sources. As a result, SOAR allows the cyber security professionals to analyse the security posture of an organization, foresee and take necessary precautions against security incidents, and perform better in identifying and remediating threats. In other words, SOAR allows organizations of all sizes to detect and respond to attacks in a faster and more accurate way. With its machine learning algorithms and ability to sift through enormous amounts of data, it delivers higher quality intelligence, thus improving the efficiency of security processes.
With SOAR solutions, you can catalogue your assets meticulously and acquire a better perception of their security status. If any of your assets have a rather vulnerable status, you can notice it and resolve the issue before it is exploited by an attacker. Moreover, SOAR solutions can be easily integrated to the various security tools.
As a result, it is possible to streamline your security practices and make use of **SOAR’**s ability to comb through massive amounts of data. That way, you can gather detailed information about vulnerabilities of your system and integrate this data with threat intelligence acquired from all over your networks. This allows you to make informed decisions in regards to the vulnerability management practices and also lets you to position the vulnerabilities within a greater context.
