Proactive Vulnerability Alerting

Every company uses computer software that is critical to their business. The more complex the software solution, the greater number of developers that are required to build and maintain the source code. Inevitably mistakes will be made when the code is generated. Incorrectly coded software can lead to unintended software performance which in turn can impact in a business’s ability to deliver their product and/or service.

In the world of cybersecurity, source code errors are known to produce what is call a software vulnerability. When a vulnerability is found by a malicious actor, that vulnerability could be exploited and allow for any number of consequences:

• Unauthorized access to systems or system data
• Crashing a system (commonly known as Denial of Service)
• Injecting code into the software to make it act in a way it was not intended
• Altering data that interacts or is processed by the system

There are many other unintended consequences.

The process of identifying vulnerabilities on a company network and then taking actions to mitigate those vulnerabilities is known as Vulnerability Management. As the world continues to increase the speed at which decisions are made and systems process data and respond to inputs, the vulnerability management program must evolve to keep apace.

Today, companies rely on a traditional vulnerability management system whereby they use a vulnerability scanner to identify systems that are vulnerable to any number of known issues. While the reports provide comprehensive information, the issue with this process is that it can be slow to identify when new vulnerabilities are identified and then map those vulnerabilities to specific systems on a computer network that need fixed.

Traditional Vulnerability Management

The traditional vulnerability management process results in potential idle time in Cyber Defense whereby an attacker can exploit your network. This is due to the delay between when a vulnerability is announced, and when a detection method is developed and incorporated into vulnerability scanning tools. Depending on the type and complexity of the vulnerability, a detection signature may take days or even weeks to develop.

The Solution: Proactive Vulnerability Alerting

Getting near real-time information on critical vulnerabilities is a game-changer. Rapid detection of software flaws is possible using Cipher’s Proactive Vulnerability Alerting service. This service is developed with the capability to crawl the internet looking for indications of vulnerability disclosures. Once identified, a security bulletin is automatically generated and released to those customers that ar affected. This allows Cipher to quickly provide your company with enriched vulnerability information within your environment. The overall goal is to reduce detection and analysis time.

Because we believe vulnerability detection is so critical for an effective cybersecurity program, we have incorporated this offering into our CipherBox MDR service.

Podcast

Listen to a podcast episode we recorded discussing the new offering.

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