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Most of the world’s largest companies have hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons due to security breaches. The statistics are startling. According to the 2019 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 34% of data breaches involved some form of insider involvement, 32% breaches involved phishing, while 56% of breaches took months to discover.
Most companies don’t want their senior leaders and other employees to be working for competitors, but it happens all the time. If a company’s IT team is not actively engaged in vulnerability management, they can’t anticipate these kinds of problems before they happen or find solutions after they happen.
In addition to these issues, many companies have been breaching their own customers’ privacy as well as their own employee’s security through various means—including not encrypting customer data that is stored in their databases, having outdated software on their websites that leaves them vulnerable to hackers, and sharing passwords for critical accounts with employees who leave the company.
Ultimately, even if you’re doing everything correctly now, you need an ongoing process that allows you to constantly monitor your infrastructure so that any changes can be addressed before damage occurs.
Vulnerability management has become an essential part of IT security. As threats to data and systems continue to grow, organizations need a way to protect themselves from cyberattacks. A vulnerability management system helps businesses identify potential vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by hackers or malware.
Read: How to prevent data breaches with IT discovery?
IT discovery can be an effective tool for vulnerability management
If you think an IT discovery tool is only responsible for discovering your assets, think again! IT asset discovery is a critical element of vulnerability management. It allows you to identify every device that accesses your network and pinpoints all connected devices. In addition, it helps with this too, as it provides insight into which vulnerabilities are present on each device.
It’s not just the big guys taking hits: small businesses can also benefit from IT asset discovery because they don’t have enough resources or expertise in-house to handle this task themselves. Many smaller businesses are also under threat from hackers and cybercriminals.
As the number of small businesses continues to grow, so does their need for IT security services. But unlike larger companies that have dedicated IT teams, smaller businesses may not have the resources or manpower to conduct proper discovery on a regular basis.
This can leave them vulnerable to cyberattacks and data theft by hackers who target less secure organizations with little oversight or resources (such as a small-town restaurant).
Cybercriminals can exploit vulnerabilities in these networks without much worry about being caught. This makes it all too easy for them to steal sensitive information from unsuspecting victims.
For every organization, IT asset discovery is a critical element of vulnerability management. It identifies every device that accesses your network and plays an important role in identifying and removing old devices.
IT asset discovery also helps you identify and remove devices that don’t belong in your network. This information can help you reduce the risk of a breach or security incident by knowing where sensitive data is stored and whether there are any weak spots in your infrastructure.
IT asset discovery identifies every device that accesses your network. This includes PCs, laptops, printers and other hardware, mobile devices like tablets and smartphones, IoT devices such as sensors or wearables, software services running on those assets including applications and databases, and wireless networks they might be connected to. As a result, IT asset discovery can identify not only the vulnerable hardware itself but also all of its potential security points.
In addition to identifying what assets are connected to your network, IT asset discovery can also provide details about how those assets are being used. For example, whether a particular PC is being used for email only or also for accessing company data on a daily basis—and where they are located in the organization’s physical space.
This information is critical for building out a map of who has access to sensitive data within the organization so that you can prioritize resources based on risk level when prioritizing vulnerability management efforts
For example, it may be that you have an old laptop stored away in a drawer somewhere that no longer needs to be connected to your network, but which still provides an entry point for hackers.
You can also use the information gathered through IT asset discovery to test how well your security policies are being followed. As part of this process, you might detect computers or mobile devices on the network that haven’t been updated with critical security patches. Or perhaps some employee is using a personal device with weak authentication credentials configured for remote access into corporate systems.
IT discovery capabilities are important for more than just vulnerability management. They also help with IoT security and risk management initiatives.
With IT asset discovery, you can identify and remove those old devices permanently or ensure they are locked down and not accessible by any potential intruders. Through continuous monitoring, it can also detect unauthorized devices that enter the network after being added intentionally or unintentionally by employees or contractors.
Staying ahead of cyber threats
But what about more modern devices? IoT is here to stay, and your organization must protect itself against threats coming from the Internet of Things (IoT).
IoT devices are vulnerable to cyber threats. The technology behind IoT is largely based on the use of wireless protocols, which allows them to connect with other devices. This also makes them susceptible to attacks like Denial-of-Service (DoS) and Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks.
In addition, being connected all the time means that they can be used as a source of data leakage or stolen credentials by hackers. They could also be turned into botnets through malware infections that allow hackers access to everything from financial information on corporate databases up through industrial processes such as water treatment plants and power grids.
IT asset discovery helps with this too, as it pinpoints all connected devices – including those that don’t belong in your network. It also identifies servers and other systems that aren’t being used anymore, which can help you reduce costs.
The only way to mitigate risks is to identify assets and vulnerabilities. IT asset discovery is the first step in vulnerability management, and it’s critical for all organizations to conduct this process on an ongoing basis.
A comprehensive IT asset discovery process will identify all of your assets, including those that no longer need to be connected to your network. Additionally, it must include a thorough assessment of all vulnerabilities. All those that don’t belong in your network as well as those that do—and threats, risks and other important data elements related to managing cyber risk.
Virima Discovery uncovers vulnerabilities and automatically remediates them
IT asset discovery is an essential element of any organization’s vulnerability management strategy.
A one-stop solution for IT asset discovery and vulnerability management, Virima’s integrated software has the flexibility to support both agentless and agent-based (Windows) discovery in hybrid environments.
Virima Discovery is a seamless and powerful solution that helps enterprises unlock IT asset data across hybrid environments. Virima’s software integrates with your existing infrastructure, scanning hosts and providing a complete inventory of all the devices, applications, operating systems and configurations across any IT environment.
Virima Discovery is built with security and privacy in mind. Threat intelligence data is collected and stored locally on servers you own, using your own login credentials. Data is encrypted on the Discovery app and never transferred to cloud-based services, where it would be accessible from other sources. All discovery data is securely transmitted to the AWS cloud.
Virima clients can now add an extra layer of protection to their vulnerability management tools by integrating NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD) data into the Virima software. This capability allows them to discover and map vulnerabilities directly from the NVD repository at no additional charge. With this update, customers can perform highly accurate scans for known CPEs and CVEs which are pre-populated in the software using data feeds from external sources.
ViVID Service Mapping allows you to prioritize vulnerable assets based on their impact on the business’ critical functions. Combine this with automated vulnerability scanning and remediation and it’s easy to see why we’re the choice for so many organizations looking for improved security management.But don’t stop here, there’s more! Connect with our experts to find out how you can leverage Virima Discovery and ViVID Service Mapping to prevent IT threats.
