Vulnerability programs are no longer an option for organizations, especially for those required to meet compliances such as HIPAA and PCI. This should not come as a surprise to anyone. The amount of threats businesses face grows exponentially each year. In 2018 we saw 16,412 new vulnerabilities published. A 12% increase over the previous year. As of 2020, there are more than 127,000 published common vulnerabilities and exposures. This boils down to nearly 45 new vulnerabilities per day.
These new threats target organizations of all sizes, rapidly increasing the need for proper vulnerability management systems, regardless of industry. Every business is vulnerable. Especially those that have shifted to a remote workforce, but what size business is most vulnerable?
Small organizations
Threat Level: Elevated
Small IT teams are often more relaxed about enforcing security policies due to their roles requiring them to "wear multiple hats" within their company.
Organizations of this size often lack proper staffing and the expertise needed to prioritize and remediate threats properly.
Mid-sized organizations
Threat Level: High
Mid-sized businesses face many of the same difficulties as small organizations, but with more attack surfaces resulting from a larger web presence.
They often believe their IT staff can handle any security issue. That is not always the case for a variety of reasons...
IT staff at mid-sized organizations are often too busy with other tasks to enforce a proper security policy.
They often lack the skills and experience necessary to maintain a far-reaching security strategy.
Staff members react to problems rather than proactively managing layered security.
Enterprise organizations
Threat Level: Severe
While enterprise level organizations have the ability to maintain a proper IT staff, they run the highest risk of an attack. Simply put, a scan in a high-node environment can yield thousands/millions of critical findings.
Although small and mid-sized businesses may lack the skills and experience needed to counteract threats, large enterprise organizations face the greatest risk of a cyber attack. The greater the number of end-users, the higher the number of vulnerabilities will be.
Regardless of the quality of an organization’s IT team, there is a need for a comprehensive vulnerability management tool. Powernet offers a fully managed (or co-managed) vulnerability solution to consumers that identifies, classifies, remediates and mitigates security weaknesses on a regular basis.
Organizations understand how important it is to protect their networks from attackers attempting to exploit vulnerabilities, but even then, many organizations only scan once a year to fill a compliance checkbox and even fewer ever take action on their findings. Why doesn’t this work? Not only is it poor practice to ignore vulnerabilities that require immediate remediation, but as mentioned previously, when you add 45 new threats per day into the equation, that is more than 16,400 vulnerabilities that remain exposed over the course of a year.
Effective Vulnerability Management programs provide ongoing, proactive scans (typically real time, bi-weekly or monthly), remediation services and unlimited rescans to confirm remediation efforts and deliver immediate results in addition to reports that will satisfy internal and external auditors. Organizations need a proactive vulnerability management program that delivers results. Start fulfilling that need today. Connect with our team at info@powernetco.com to learn more about this vital network security service.
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