What is a Vulnerability Management Framework?

Vulnerability assessment framework is a structured approach designed to ensure that organizations move beyond ad-hoc vulnerability scanning and implement a more comprehensive approach to respond to vulnerabilities across their IT infrastructure.

The practical nature of a vulnerability management framework is to provide guidance and best practices to discover and patch vulnerabilities as quickly as possible, the emphasis is on speed and efficiency and streamlining the finding and fixing process for security threats, which lowers the risk of exploitation. Its comprehensive lifecycle approach helps organizations to make sure that all the critical stages of vulnerability management such as discovery, assessment, prioritization and remediation are followed in a structured manner. This process resembles an architectural construction design of a building, which provides detailed management plans, outlining the layout, systems and materials. Similarly, VMF offers structured blueprints for establishing and maintaining a secure IT infrastructure, with all the important components and processes in place.

Adopting a proactive and holistic approach to vulnerability management

Traditional ad-hoc vulnerability management narrowly focuses on simple detection and patching based on scanner’s findings, but VAF encourages a more strategic and holistic approach to vulnerability management. It considers process weaknesses also not just technical vulnerabilities, such as human factors or configuration errors which could contribute to security threats. It also provides repeatable and consistent processes to ensure thorough and comprehensive assessment of vulnerabilities. Organizations can establish progress tracking, metrics and score in their vulnerability management practices.

Seven Phases of Vulnerability Assessment Framework

Specific interconnected phases of a vulnerability assessment framework can slightly vary depending on the framework being used by an organization, could be a custom developed framework but the common structure mostly includes the following key phases.

1. Planning and scoping

It is the first step in a vulnerability assessment framework to determine the scope and objectives, such as identifying the networks, systems and applications including on-prem and cloud, assignment of roles and responsibilities, methodology and tools usage, and setting deadlines and communication etc.

2. Asset Discovery

Build an inventory by collecting detailed information about the target assets within the cope such as hardware, software, network topology, configurations and connected devices, critical assets and their value in business processes, and understanding the security procedures and policies of the organization.

3. Vulnerability Scanning

Use built in vulnerability scanners in VMF along with any other tool to discover known and unknown threats and weaknesses, schedule scanners to promptly find newly discovered threats, analyze the scan results thoroughly, verify findings, perform manual testing for vulnerabilities which could be missed by automated tools.

4. Risk Assessment

Perform thorough evaluation of the identified vulnerabilities using CVSS and EPSS, classify and prioritize vulnerabilities according to their exploitability, severity, impact and asset criticality according to their risk ratings, trend and score. Eliminate the false positives or non-actionable threats.

5. Remediation and Mitigation

Develop and implement remediation and mitigation plans on the bases of prioritized vulnerabilities, apply patches, configure systems securely, implement compensating controls where remediation is not possible by patches or accept risks if not critically affecting operations. Track the remediation process progress, assign the remediation deadlines.

6. Verification/Validation

Rescan the systems to verify that the vulnerabilities are effectively addressed after remediation or mitigation, conduct follow up evaluation to make sure the security and identification of any newly emerged vulnerabilities.

7. Reporting and Documentation

Reporting and Documentation is an essential step in a VAF program, they provide clear and concise vulnerability reports and dashboards for communicating the results to relevant stakeholders, management and system owners, which provide actionable information and recommendations for remediation and mitigation.

Significance of Vulnerability Management Framework

Core reason to have a vulnerability management framework is not just a good idea but an absolute necessity with respect to rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape and emerging growth of new vulnerabilities on a large scale. Vulnerabilities growth could be due to interconnected systems, the complexity of software, efforts of security researchers and growing threat actors, which is expanding the CVEs pool. The National Vulnerability Database (NVD) managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) keeps the statistics of known vulnerabilities, as of today there are more than 293,000 total vulnerabilities listed in NVD, let alone more than 40,000 in the year 2024 increasing from 29000 in 2023. Without a well-organized framework, it becomes overwhelming for security teams to identify, evaluate and respond to the extreme volume of vulnerabilities. VMF provides a systematic approach to identify the most critical vulnerabilities affecting your IT environment. A vulnerability management program framework provides well defined structure to security teams for managing the tasks

Vulnerability Management Framework Comparisons (CISA, NIST, SANS)

Choosing the best vulnerability management framework by an organization is essential based on the structure, benefits and limitations provided by them according to organization’s needs, size, industry requirement and existing security strategies. There are many vulnerability management frameworks out there, but we will discuss the most known and leading frameworks, CISA, NIST and SANS.

CISA (CRR Volume 4):

Cyber Resource Review (CRR) Volume 4 framework from CISA focuses on building a vulnerability management system using cyclical processes of ongoing improvement, it is designed to be adaptable and flexible for various organizations.

Strategy -> Plan -> Implementation -> Assessment (cyclical)

This proactive approach by CRR Volume 4 devises continuous improvement starting with overall strategy such as goals and objectives of the VMF e.g. understanding business requirement, identification of critical assets etc. Followed by the 2nd step detailed organizational alignment and planning such as defining roles and responsibilities, selection of tools and technologies. The 3rd step is deployment of security controls, configuration of vulnerability scanners and systems, establishing training, monitoring and incident response. Followed by 4^th step, assessment for tracking effectiveness of vulnerability management program and areas for improvement, feeding the information back to the strategy phase from where it has started, making the process as cyclical improvement loop, which ensures that vulnerability management is an ongoing process.

Benefits: Encourages best practices, flexible, data informed

CRR Volume 4 encourages organizations to adopt industry level best practices based on security principles, high level nature of flexibility to be integrated into different systems and adopt framework according to specific needs of different organizations, the assessment phase is based on data driven information to make decisions. CISA also instruct to log the vulnerability and its prioritization as Root Cause Analysis (RCA) as best practice to be used in cyclical improvement loop.

Drawbacks: Lacks detailed guidance, may not suffice for larger organizations

As far as CRR provides a strategic roadmap and industry level best practices, it generally lacks detailed guidance such as granular information or step by step instructions such as implementing security controls or scanners configurations, or adaptable for advanced use cases and overall framework maturity. May work well for small organizations or new to the formal process of vulnerability management, large or complex organizations might find the framework too abstract and may need more guidance to manage their IT infrastructure effectively.

NIST (CSF & SP 800-40r4)

NIST offers several frameworks including the most famous Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) which provides structured approaches to manage cybersecurity risks and Special Publication (SP 800-40R4), which provides guidance on enterprise level patch management technologies and processes.

CSF: Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, Recover

These five functions of Cyber Security Framework (CSF) are broadly applicable across different industries and sizes of organizations, with Identifying organization’s assets, system and data, protecting them with security measures like delivering critical infrastructure services, detecting cybersecurity events and occurrences by implementing different tools, responding by taking actions for those detected threats and finally maintaining recovery plans for the affected systems and services due to vulnerabilities, restoring them to their original state.

Adaptable; useful for compliance preparations; but generalist

CSF is designed for specific organizations for their risk profile and tailored business needs, it aligns best with many regulatory frameworks such as HIPPA or FISMA and their required standards, making it best tool to show compliance. Even though adaptable, it is a general framework and does not provide more detailed guidance for specific implementation of vulnerability management such as the detailed controls documentation on patching practices, which is provided by SP 800 frameworks.

SP 800-40r4: Knowing -> Planning -> Executing (similarly straightforward)

The NIST Special Publication 800-40R4 provides a straightforward three-phase approach such as knowing phase which focuses on identifying and understanding vulnerabilities and the available patches across organizations. Planning phase for developing a plan for remediation and mitigation for identified vulnerabilities including scheduling and communication. And finally executing phase which instructs on implementing the remediation and mitigation process such as deploying patches and verifying. SP 800-40R4 provides detailed guidance on vulnerability management lifecycle than general CSF.

SANS (Framework & Maturity Model)

SANS stands generally for (Sysadmin, Audit, Network, and Security), specializes in cybersecurity and information security trainings and guidelines, empowering organizations and cybersecurity professionals to build strong, effective and risk-based vulnerability management programs. Their framework focuses on same principles such as identifying, analyzing and treating vulnerabilities, with the help of maturity model for assessment and improvement.

Seven Phases of Vulnerability Assessment under SANS Framework

The detailed breakdown of these seven phases of vulnerability assessment framework has already been provided in a previous section, which reflects the SANS approach, below are the general description of seven phases.

1. Engagement planning: Plan the scope and objectives of an organization’s vulnerability assessment.
2. Intelligence modeling: Establishing an inventory of an organization’s IT environment.
3. Discovery: Identification of assets within the assessment scope.
4. Scanning: Implementation of automated vulnerability scans for potential threats.
5. Validation: Evaluation of scanners results for vulnerabilities and false positives.
6. Remediation: Development and implementation of remediation plans.
7. Reporting: Documentation and reporting of vulnerability assessment findings with recommendations.

These phases provide a granular insight into the vulnerability assessment process, such as Engagement planning and Intelligence Modeling elaborate on the importance of understanding and preparation of threat landscape. Discovery phase instructs for establishing inventory of systems, applications and services used within an organization, in order to help with defining Scanning phase for running it on most critical and valuable assets. Validation phase is essential for ensuring the accuracy of findings, Remediation and Reporting phases are the most important ones for treating vulnerabilities and communication on them.

Maturity Levels

There are five levels of security awareness program maturity model outlined by SANS for organizations to understand and improve their security awareness initiatives.

• Nonexistent: This is an initial stage where either no security program exists in an organization, or lack of understanding by employees for their role in organizational security such as being target for potential threats. Employees may not adhere to security policies if any exist.
• Compliance Focused: At this stage, the primary motive of an organization is to meet specific regulatory or audit requirements for compliance such as PCI DSS or HIPPA, limited training such as annual, one time or infrequent sessions, usually focused on narrow compliance related topics and not truly changing the behavior. Employees are still unclear about larger perspectives of security awareness.
• Promoting Awareness & Behavior Change: This stage defines the program to identify human risks and prioritize training to address them going beyond just compliance achievement, training should be beyond annual or ad-hoc based, continuous training sessions throughout the year. Training content should be positive, focusing on establishing genuine behavior change for both at work and home. Employees start to understand and follow security policies, actively assessing, preventing and reporting security events.
• Long-Term Sustainment and Culture Change: At this level, security awareness program becomes an essential part of the security culture of an organization, there are established processes, dedicated resources and leadership support. Regular annual reviews and updates are performed to make the program current.
• Metrics Framework: This is not just the final level, but rather a crucial component, which represents the most maturity level, should be integrated in all levels beyond compliance. Program uses a metrics framework which is aligned with organization’s objectives, business goals, tracks progress and measures the program’s impact for reducing overall risks. Continuous improvement by using data driven insights.

More comprehensive but lacks specific regulatory mapping

SANS assessment framework offers more detailed guidance and security best practices on overall vulnerability management program than the CISA or NIST frameworks but lacks specific compliance related mapping which NIST and CISA provides. Implementation of SANS framework can be resource intensive, may require external expertise and tools.

How Pathlock Can Help?

Pathlock enable organizations must proactively deploy a robust vulnerability management program as cyberthreats are evolving and thousands of new vulnerabilities are emerging every month. Relying on an outdated and ad-hoc method is no longer sufficient. If you are ready to defend your IT infrastructure, take the first step to secure your IT infrastructure before threat actors exploit the gaps by scheduling a consultation for an enhanced discovery that how effectively your organization treats critical threats and risks, how they manage to identify, prioritize and mitigate vulnerabilities. There are many vulnerability management/assessment frameworks out there, NIST, CISA and SANS are the well-known, embrace them to build a proactive, comprehensive and resilient strategy flexible to be customized according to your environment needs and keeping the features like improved security, reduced risk and adhering to compliance in mind. Make your security posture gets strong before threats become breaches.