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The steady cadence of cybersecurity challenges that defined the last twelve months underscored the new normal the world has settled into. Security professionals racked up significant overtime to defend against increasingly sophisticated threats.
At the start of 2021, we saw a significant jump in threats, with 2,700 CVEs published in Q1 alone (a 380% increase from a decade ago). Facing an average of 31 new vulns published daily, Security professionals soon realized they had their work cut out for them — and 2021 delivered.
Limited by finite capacity and budgets, security leaders must make tough decisions about where and how they allocate resources. They need the right threat and vulnerability intelligence and comprehensive risk context to make those decisions — and these characteristics will define Security solutions for years to come.
We believe this is why Gartner recently underscored the criticality of vulnerability prioritization technology (VPT) for enterprise security operations — as the technology necessary to efficiently and effectively identify, isolate, and annihilate their riskiest vulnerabilities.
How VPT helps teams elevate security operations
The latest Gartner Market Guide for Vulnerability Assessment traces the latest trajectory of cybersecurity vendor offerings which expands beyond mere vulnerability identification to include additional management options, automatic remediation, enhanced risk context, reporting functions, and more. Remote work challenges are also influencing many vendor developments, including emphasizing endpoint platform protection (EPP) and endpoint detection and response (EDR).
From these trends, a handful of key recommendations emerge. For modern Security operations looking to adopt a proactive stance to reduce the most organizational risk, Gartner places a specific emphasis on VPT as a core function of risk-based vulnerability management (RBVM).
Today’s Security and IT teams must work harder to sift the truly critical from the benign. The most advanced solutions employing VPT assist these teams by enhancing their vulnerability data with asset criticality and environmental context, multiple baked-in threat intelligence feeds, predictive analytics, and actionable risk scores.
VPT also helps teams gain better control of their environment and security operations. Armed with data-driven prioritization, Security and IT teams realize faster and more effective remediation, the ability to measure (and minimize) risk across their entire environment, define simpler security workflows, and dedicate time and effort to more strategic initiatives.
Ultimately, VPT elevates Security operations from focusing on fix lists to helping drive security strategies.
Threats aren’t slowing down — and neither should you
The pace of cybersecurity will only keep accelerating this coming year. Regardless of how sophisticated bad actors get or how sinister their exploits are, you have no choice but to keep up. Embracing a risk-based vulnerability management approach coupled with the right vulnerability prioritization technology, enabling you to anticipate the next big threat.
For a deep dive into how you can best leverage these trends and technologies, download your copy of the Gartner Market Guide for Vulnerability Assessment, courtesy of Kenna Security (now part of Cisco).
