Vulnerability Management: Improve Cyber Security with GTT

Vulnerability management is the process of regularly identifying and fixing security gaps before bad actors can use them against you. Unfortunately, this critical process is made more challenging by the velocity of newly identified vulnerabilities and the complexity of IT systems. 

To put this into perspective, in 2020 there were over 18,000 new vulnerabilities, with over half classified as high or critical in severity (REDSCAN—NIST NVD Analysis 2020 report). That means every single day of 2020, IT was faced with assessing 50+ new vulnerabilities, understanding each, identifying whether any applied to their environment and if so, determining the urgency by which they should be patched. 
Bad actors are equally aware of new vulnerabilities and use them as attack surfaces to gain a foothold. GTT helps your IT team stay ahead of them.

IT professionals understand that vulnerability management is fundamentally important, yet daily activities are filled with conflicting priorities. Every day begins with the goal of tackling proactive and strategic work; however, as the day unwinds, staff gets consumed by reactive firefighting driven by real-time problems.
This never-ending process of troubleshooting and problem resolution makes it incredibly difficult—if not impossible—for IT to proactively stay ahead of patch management, configuration errors, and product end-of-life risks. 
Ultimately, this means that every single minute of every single day, there are unaddressed vulnerabilities within your environment creating risk.
This is where GTT can really make a difference to your risk management.

Although regulatory requirements vary, they generally hold organisations accountable for following cybersecurity industry best practices. Vulnerability assessment is considered a foundational requirement and expectation with regulatory compliance frameworks. The question that companies must consider is whether to manage the process in-house, or to outsource it to a managed service provider.

For many, the decision for whether to do vulnerability assessments in-house or outsource them is based solely on IT resources. What is often left out of the decision process, however, are the risks introduced by IT’s conflicting priorities. As mentioned above, the IT team’s time and focus are typically consumed by reactive problem-solving. When staff gets stretched thin, proactive vulnerability assessments and patch management often get pushed aside, increasing risk while leaving the organisation unaware.