Most of us will be familiar with what it means to morph, to have the elemental nature of something be changed and thus no longer able to be classified as what it was before. If a pop culture reference might be helpful for you, think of werewolves went from being humans to being beasts and back.

So let’s start our discussion on threat and vulnerability management practices here – and the very serious threat of cyber attacks or data leaks – by looking at a very eye-opening fact from just over a little a year ago. And one that talks about polymorphism as it relates to malware.

‘93.6% of malware observed was polymorphic, meaning it has the ability to constantly change its code to evade detection’*

*  2020 Webroot Threat Report

Polymorphic is a great piece of vocabulary, and the connection between werewolves and malware is there – at least in as far as both are going to looking to do you harm.

The important part of that fact is in the last pat of the sentence – ‘change its code to evade detection.’ This is where, how, and why there’s no one-time fix for cyber security for businesses with sensitive digital data. Not being ‘outsmarted’ by malware or any other type of cyber security for data threat is what empowers us to do what we do here at SecureTab.

Defining Threats and Vulnerability

Vulnerabilities are weaknesses or other conditions in an organization that a threat actor – which can be anything for a single troublemaking hacker to a disgruntled employee to an entire nation state in instances –  can exploit to adversely affect data security. Cyber vulnerabilities typically include a subset of those weaknesses and focus on issues in the IT software, hardware, and systems an organization uses.

And that by and large defines what the threat is too. That individual, group, or any other initiator who’s looking to exploit those vulnerabilities makes up the threat. So what are the threat and vulnerability management best practices that companies need to have in place when working with a cyber security provider in Canada?

What’s the best way of making sure those threats are neutralized? Well, the best way of identifying them may be to look at where these vulnerabilities most usually exist.

Two Primary Causes for Data Security Vulnerabilities

Now this isn’t what we’re talking about primarily in this blog on threat and vulnerability management best practices, so we won’t beat around the bush and instead list them straight out:

• Hardware and software defects (often which come ‘ready-made’ with the product vendors supply. Some are addressed with patches and the like, but many aren’t)
• Unsecured Configurations and their interacting with network elements, servers, browsers, software and applications, and end user devices

Now when a customer comes to us with needs for cyber security for company data, this is a part of what we look for in our initial cyber security audit for a company. Of course, it runs a whole lot deeper than that, but this is good for you to understand when having a grasp of the primary cause for data vulnerabilities.

5 Core Process for Threat and Vulnerability Management Best Practices

An effective threat and vulnerability management protocol for cyber security is almost always going to based around a standard 5-core process. The actual cyber security infrastructure must always be build around one of these 5 cores, before being applied in a sequential manor for optimized cyber security against data breaches.

Threat and management best practices are always going to be built around:

• Understanding IT environments through detailed tacking of hardware and software assets, including current versions and applied patches. This is done under the greater umbrella of maintaining an asset inventory.

• Setting standards for the hardware and software components being used, to avoid creating unnecessary vulnerabilities based on over-stretching of existing resources

• Being immediately on top of and responding appropriately to newly identified vulnerabilities in the hardware and software products used,  or intended for use. This is often described as maintaining awareness and detecting vulnerabilities as part of threat and vulnerability management best practices

• Mitigating and/or remediating the effects of identified vulnerabilities in hardware and software products being used and determining and measuring the risk potential attached to that exposure level

• Continuously monitoring IT environments for early identification of vulnerable sets and then avoiding re-introduction of known vulnerabilities

The More Micro Level

The above is more of macro-level objectives that dictate what a cyber security provider is going to base their products and services around for network threat and vulnerability management best practices. At a more micro level the two aspects of these best practices that are worth mentioning here, in conclusion, is that the provider must be constantly reviewing their ability to successfully and reliably identify attack paths that can jeopardize high-risk assets.

The other is to validate any conclusions you come to in this regard, and cyber information security remediation validation is a very important aspect of threat and vulnerability management best practices. However, it could well be a full discussion on its own so perhaps we’ll touch on that a later time here.

We hope this has been a good overview that’s not too long of a read, and of course, we encourage anyone who’d like to discuss cyber security for their company to contact us.