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How Vulnerability Assessments Differ Across Providers In our Vulnerability Management – A Best Practice blog post, we suggested vulnerability assessments were the process of scanning for and identifying possible vulnerabilities and risks within an organization’s systems. We further suggested that vulnerability management exists for the purpose of identifying and remediating vulnerabilities in systems quickly before they are exploited. Vulnerabilities, which are essentially flaws or weaknesses within the software can lead to a system or network that can be exploited by attackers. These vulnerabilities must be identified, assessed, and patched regularly to ensure that they are not uncovered and exploited by attackers. To create and maintain a strong security posture, business owners and security staff must be aware of the vulnerabilities or flaws on their systems and create a process by which they can be quickly patched. It has been made clear through countless attacks across small and large businesses as well as government entities that If vulnerabilities are not identified or remediated, companies leave themselves open to an attack. An effective vulnerability assessment can dramatically decrease an organization’s cybersecurity risk. In this blog post, we will describe what to look for when evaluating potential vulnerability assessment services. Vulnerability Assessments Are Not the Same as Penetration Tests First, let’s clear up some inevitable confusion that often leaks into any vulnerability assessment discussion. Vulnerability assessments and penetration tests are both designed to identify vulnerabilities within an organization’s cybersecurity defenses. However, they have different purposes and carry out the vulnerability discovery process in different ways. We spent considerable time discussing the difference between vulnerability assessments and penetration tests in the following blog posts: Penetration Testing vs Vulnerability Assessments – Part 1 of 2Penetration Testing vs Vulnerability Assessments – Part 2 of 2 A vulnerability assessment is designed to provide a surface-level assessment of…

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Overcoming the Challenges of Firewall and SIEM Management This blog post is not a commercial for SecureOps; we have just worked with enough clients to know that tuning firewalls and managing SIEMs, particularly handling the hundreds, if not thousands of security alerts is overwhelming. In addition, the business case for managed firewall and SIEM centers concerning the reduction of cost and the ability to leverage security expertise to help manage operations and protect the business from cybersecurity threats and data breaches is becoming more compelling. The increased complexity of the solutions and the growing number of threats are too much even for the mid-sized and large SOC’s that we serve. To be clear, managed SIEM is an alternative to on-premise deployment, setup, and monitoring of a firewall and SIEM software solution where an organization contracts with a third-party service provider to host the applications on their servers and monitor the organization’s network for potential security threats. Check out our blog post below which documents the benefits of using a SIEM to improve a company’s overall security defense. Organizations choose managed SIEM and firewall for their corporate security needs to deploy faster, reduce setup and training costs, and leverage the expertise of cybersecurity specialists. The Benefits of Using a SIEM to Improve IT Securityhttps://www.secureops.com/security/blog-what-is-a-siem/ Companies have come to understand the criticality and expense that a firewall and security event and information management (SIEM) solution are to an organization’s cybersecurity defenses. However, just purchasing and deploying these systems is not enough. Organizations commonly make simple mistakes and face challenges in managing these systems that degrade or negate their effectiveness at protecting against cyber threats. Common Challenges with Firewall Management A firewall is a network security device that examines network traffic. Based on rules and policies, the firewall inspects network traffic to block…

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The Advantages of Outsourcing Cybersecurity We’ve written blog posts on the “5 Benefits of an MSSP” and we had a two-part series on “Increasing SOC Effectiveness. However, MSSP’s are evolving quickly to handle more tasks for the client organizations they serve so we wanted to make sure you had a comprehensive list of ALL of the tasks an MSSP can handle. The reason that MSSP’s are taking on more responsibility is simply that the SOC’s within the client organizations that they serve are being tasked with an increasing number of responsibilities including compliance, vulnerability management with prioritized patching, and proactive testing including penetration tests and posture assessments. MSSPAlert published a fairly interesting survey of 380 cybersecurity professionals of which 41% of their organizations believe that as much cybersecurity functionality should be outsourced as possible providing the MSSP is good. First, we would hope the MSSP would provide a quality service. Second, the results of this survey are very different from the results of similar surveys published 3-5 years ago. At that time, CISO’s, heads of IT Security, and analysts saw MSSP’s as a threat to their role within the organization. That is no longer the case – based on what I can tell, the shortage of cybersecurity personnel and the absolute sprawl of SOC responsibilities have created an opportunity for MSSP’s to partner more effectively with their clients without creating any “outsourcing” threat. With that in mind I looked over the blog posts that we’ve written and realized we could have a comprehensive, but brief post on the benefits that a GOOD MSSP could deliver. Let’s try and get that done in this blog post. The 5 Benefits of an MSSPhttps://www.secureops.com/security/5-benefits-of-an-mssp/ How to Improve Your SOCs Effectiveness – Part 1https://www.secureops.com/security/blog-soc-effectiveness/ How to Improve Your SOCs Effectiveness – Part 2https://www.secureops.com/security/blog-soc-effectiveness-part2/ Last…

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