Vulnerability Management
What are the essentials of technical vulnerability management? Let’s uncover benefits and implementation details for developers who need more robust app security.
Vulnerability Management
The more complex your applications, particularly if you’re working within a larger development team with pull requests flying at all hours of the day, the more likely you have vulnerabilities lurking in your code, containers, or clouds. Your capacity to uncover those vulnerabilities and manage the lifecycle of fixing them—including assessing risk, prioritizing with your project management software, collecting necessary context, and ultimately merging a fix to master—all falls under the umbrella of technical vulnerability management.
involve patched vulnerabilities that developers simply failed to identify and apply in time.
PurpleSec
An example of technical vulnerability management and how it works
Technical vulnerability management tools are not point solutions that solve only a specific application security problem, like Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) or Software Composition Analysis (SCA). They glue multiple code and configuration scanners together to catch vulnerabilities wherever they might linger, from code to cloud network infrastructure.
For example, a technical vulnerability management tool alerts your development team to a critical vulnerability in a popular open-source library your application depends on. It doesn’t just say, “Hey, your problem is in viewXYZ.js; good luck finding a solution.” Instead, it informs you of the exact components, methods, or views most significantly affected, providing specific guidance on applying patches or other mitigations, such as upgrading to a newer version of that dependency.
For technical vulnerability management, the ultimate goal is to ensure you:
- Never miss a vulnerability in your application, and
- Never have to manually sift through CVEs or LOCs to get the job done.
How does vulnerability management help developers?
Vulnerability management operates in a cycle, much like the software development lifecycle itself, where you’re using security platforms to continuously improve.
The goal isn’t just to scan and discover vulnerabilities, but prioritize based on severity to your specific application and infrastructure—vulnerability management gives you intelligent paths toward remediation that keeps you on track.
If you operate in an environment where compliance truly matters, vulnerability management software helps you meet regulatory requirements much easier than trying to glue together a half-dozen open-source scanners.
You can integrate vulnerability management scanning into your CI/CD pipelines to catch new flaws in each commit or updated dependencies that also introduce a new CVE.
Chase down your web of third-party dependencies, and what they depend on, to prevent supply chain attacks.
When working on legacy systems, use technical vulnerability management platforms to scan code you might not fully understand to implement smart, isolated patches.
Implementing vulnerability management: an overview
Unlike many other code and configuration scanning tools, proper vulnerability management isn’t something you can just download from GitHub and run in a local development environment.
For example, if you want to try out a SaaS platform designed for large businesses and enterprises:
Or with aikido
Best practices for effective technical vulnerability management
You should never be fully on the hook for remembering to run scannerABC in your terminal before every git commit or git push origin XYZ. The best vulnerability management is the one that takes the grunt work off your plate.
Regularly audit the open-source libraries and core dependencies your applications rely on. Don’t update with abandon, but do so tactically and in response to potential security flaws.
Get started with technical vulnerability management for free
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