Endpoint vulnerabilities represent a “hole in the fence” of an operating system or application, through which attackers can directly gain unauthorized access to systems and networks. Once inside, the attacker can leverage authorizations and privileges to move laterally and compromise assets. This happens more regularly than we’d care to imagine- DarkReading reported that the majority of ransomware attacks in 2022 exploited old vulnerabilities.
This is also a growing issue. On the one hand the number of vulnerabilities is constantly rising, CVE details shows a 65% increase in new vulnerability over the last 5 years alone (2018-2022). And on the other hand, attackers have become adept at quickly capitalizing on newly discovered vulnerabilities. The Ransomware Index Report Q2-Q3 2022, revealed that the increased sophistication of ransomware groups has resulted in vulnerabilities being exploited on the same day they were added to the National Vulnerability Database (NVD).
This means that every vulnerability has the potential to cause massive damage to your organization.
The solution is maintaining a ‘hole-free’ fence by managing your endpoint posture.
What is Endpoint Posture Management?
- Posture management is the process of assessing and monitoring the security posture of endpoints, such as laptops, desktops, and servers. It involves evaluating the security configuration and compliance of these endpoints, including the operating system, software applications, and network settings. This information is used to identify vulnerabilities and potential threats to the endpoint and to take appropriate action to mitigate the risks.
Endpoint posture management is essential for maintaining the security of an organization’s digital assets. By monitoring the security posture of endpoints, you can identify vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that may leave your organization open to attacks. By identifying and addressing these vulnerabilities, organizations can reduce their risk of a data breach or other security incident.
Endpoint vulnerabilities Management Challenges
However, as simple as this sounds, managing all endpoint vulnerabilities and keeping an organization’s endpoint security posture is an extremely challenging task. Below we have listed the three main challenges that organizations encounter when attempting to manage any vulnerabilities on all endpoints:
- You cannot see all the vulnerabilities in your organization.
The number and variety of endpoint devices and operating systems combined with the presence of BYOD makes it incredibly complicated to achieve full visibility of their status. Security and IT teams often struggle with mapping vulnerabilities to software updates, patch lag, fragmented processes, diverse technology stacks and disjointed teams and the risk level the compose - You do not know which to patch first
Even if all vulnerabilities have been detected and mapped, it is exceedingly difficult to determine the risk level they compose and which of them should be treated urgently, and which should be ignored.
Patching is hard.
For these reasons, patching the vulnerabilities is a massive task. Research shows that it takes an average of 97 days to apply, test and deploy a patch. Many security and IT teams only patch new vulnerabilities or vulnerabilities that are part of the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). This can lead to enterprise security gaps that allow threat actors to wreak havoc.
To maintain endpoint security posture management across an organization you need a solution that can handle these challenges. It needs to be able to provide full visibility of all the vulnerabilities in all the endpoints in the organization, to map and assess the risk level of each vulnerability and to provide a smart and automated solution to fix them.
Endpoint posture management is a critical component of endpoint security. It helps organizations identify vulnerabilities and potential threats to their endpoints, maintain compliance with industry regulations and standards, and ensure a consistent security posture across all endpoints.
