RISK BASED VM

Vulnerability management for small business

Pallavi Vishwakarma
July 2, 2023

Vulnerability management is a proactive process of identifying, categorizing/prioritizing and repairing security weaknesses to produce a less attack-susceptible environment. 

According to recent trends in cyberattacks, fraudsters intentionally target small businesses since they are more vulnerable to them. because small organizations are less able to keep up with the latest security risks and trends (this may be due to a lack of funding or competent cybersecurity resources).

As a small business, it's important to focus on vulnerability management because it will help you to identify your key assets and where to prioritize efforts in order to reduce risk, and automatically it will improve the overall security posture of your firm.

These businesses might choose to employ basic scanning services or free vulnerability detection software. The disadvantage is that small firm employees can find themselves wasting too much time trying to identify which vulnerabilities are the most serious. Finding a stand-alone program that is inexpensive, does regular scans, and produces reports that categorically list vulnerabilities is a preferable choice.

Some strategies for small businesses in vulnerability management are

1. Start by concentrating on the easy targets

When creating a strategy to address weaknesses, concentrate your initial efforts on the easiest targets. The majority of the early reduction efforts will probably be focused on missing browser updates and updating third-party browser software like Java or Adobe.

In order to stop this from happening again, it will probably be required to review the workstation and server imaging procedures to see whether any outdated, unapproved, or superfluous software is being installed as new devices are provided.

2. Streamline the product clutter

As a small business your organizations will continuously grow and often increase the number of security products in their stack as networks expand in an effort to build a cyber-resilient environment. These extra gadgets, however, are the beginning of a complicated business environment that is the cause of vulnerability. The quantity of vulnerabilities grows with complexity.

Therefore, managing vulnerabilities entails identifying every piece of infrastructure in your system, assessing each component's capabilities, and retiring any obsolete hardware. You may be shocked to learn that the same features may be present on several devices, and eliminating the redundant would improve the security posture.

3. Use the right vulnerability management tools

As a small business we would suggest you to employ basic scanning services or free vulnerability detection software. The disadvantage is that small firm employees can find themselves wasting too much time trying to identify which vulnerabilities are the most serious. Finding a stand-alone program that is inexpensive, does regular scans, and produces reports that categorically list vulnerabilities is a preferable choice.

You can think of investing in such vulnerability scanning tools since it will priovide your business a well-structured method to scan, identify, assess, and report potential weaknesses on a network.

4. Limiting Admin Privileges

As a small organization where you have limited number of people working for you it is still advised to provide limited admin privileges to the employees according to the need. It’s important to make sure that everyone is not accessing everything present in your project, and allow to use some resources when absolutely required to perform legitimate functions.

Implementing least privilege is a crucial best practise to lower security risk and lessen business disruption brought on by mistakes or malicious intent. The zero trust approach also includes least privilege as a core component.

5. Create a security attitude and security culture

There is a problem if an small business or any organisation has a mindset that security is the responsibility of the IT department. In such a setting, the organisation cannot prosper and provide lasting security. Because people are the weakest link in security and a company is only as secure as its most vulnerable member. Therefore, it is essential to alter the way people think about cybersecurity, and everyone should be held responsible for security.

As an emerging business you should make sure that everyone in a team is taking certain security measures, once in a month you can plan for cybersecurity training for your employs to make them stay updated with a latest security trends. This process of teaching your team to take security seriously will definitely help you to solve the biggest issues which you might face in future and forsure it will save your lot of fortune.

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