Vulnerability Triage
Vulnerability triage involves assessing, prioritizing, and managing discovered security vulnerabilities to determine the appropriate response. It's a critical step in vulnerability management because organizations often face many vulnerabilities and don't have the resources to address them all immediately. Triage helps security teams focus on the most critical vulnerabilities first.
Here's a breakdown of what vulnerability triage involves:
Vulnerability Identification: The process starts with identifying system, application, and network vulnerabilities. This is typically done through vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, security audits, and other security assessments.
Assessment: Each identified vulnerability is assessed to understand its characteristics. This assessment typically includes:
Severity: Determining the potential impact of the vulnerability if exploited (e.g., critical, high, medium, low). Data loss, system downtime, or unauthorized access often results in severe consequences.
Likelihood: Evaluating the probability that the vulnerability will be exploited. This considers factors like the ease of exploitation, known exploits, and the vulnerability's exposure.
Affected Assets: Identifying the systems, applications, or data the vulnerability affects.
Prioritization: Vulnerabilities are prioritized based on the assessment. High-severity, high-likelihood vulnerabilities affecting critical assets are typically given the highest priority.
Response Determination: For each vulnerability, the appropriate response is determined. This might include:
Remediation: Patching or fixing the vulnerability.
Mitigation: Implementing temporary measures to reduce the risk until remediation can be completed (e.g., firewall rules, intrusion prevention systems).
Acceptance: Accepting the risk if the cost of remediation outweighs the potential impact (this is a less common response and requires careful consideration).
Further Investigation: Additional analysis will be conducted to understand the vulnerability better.
Documentation: The triage process and decisions are documented for tracking and auditing purposes.
Vulnerability triage involves making informed decisions to manage vulnerabilities and efficiently reduce an organization's overall risk.
Here’s how ThreatNG can assist with Vulnerability Triage:
ThreatNG's external discovery capabilities provide the initial scope of assets for which vulnerabilities must be triaged.
ThreatNG's "purely external unauthenticated discovery" identifies all external-facing assets that might be vulnerable. This comprehensive discovery is the foundation for effective vulnerability triage.
Example: ThreatNG discovers all subdomains, web applications, and cloud services associated with an organization, ensuring the vulnerability triage process considers the entire external attack surface.
Complementary Solutions:
Internal Vulnerability Scanners: These scanners can complement ThreatNG by providing vulnerability data on internal systems. Combining external and internal vulnerability data gives a complete picture for triage.
Asset Management Systems: Integrating with asset management systems can provide context about the criticality of affected assets, which is crucial for prioritizing vulnerabilities during triage.
ThreatNG's external assessment capabilities provide key data for assessing the severity and likelihood of external vulnerabilities, critical aspects of vulnerability triage.
ThreatNG's assessment ratings provide insights into various aspects of external vulnerabilities:
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: Helps assess the severity and likelihood of web application vulnerabilities.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: Provides data to triage subdomain takeover risks.
Cyber Risk Exposure: Gives an overall view of cyber risk, aiding in prioritizing vulnerabilities.
Examples:
The "Web Application Hijack Susceptibility" assessment analyzes potential entry points for attackers, providing data on how easily a web application could be compromised (likelihood) and the possible impact (severity). This directly informs vulnerability triage.
The "Mobile App Exposure" assessment discovers vulnerabilities within mobile apps, such as exposed credentials. This helps triage mobile app vulnerabilities based on the sensitivity of the exposed data.
Complementary Solutions:
Vulnerability Scanning Tools: These tools can provide more detailed vulnerability information (e.g., CVSS scores) that can be used alongside ThreatNG's assessments to refine vulnerability prioritization during triage.
Penetration Testing Tools: Penetration testing results can validate the exploitability of vulnerabilities identified by ThreatNG, providing real-world context for assessing likelihood during triage.
3. Reporting
ThreatNG's reporting capabilities help communicate vulnerability information and triage decisions.
ThreatNG provides prioritized reporting ("High, Medium, Low, and Informational"). This aligns with the core function of vulnerability triage, prioritizing vulnerabilities.
Example: ThreatNG's reports include "Risk levels to help organizations prioritize their security efforts and allocate resources more effectively by focusing on the most critical risks". This directly supports the prioritization aspect of vulnerability triage.
Complementary Solutions:
Vulnerability Management Systems: These systems can use ThreatNG's vulnerability data to track the triage process, assign remediation tasks, and monitor progress.
Ticketing Systems: Integrating with ticketing systems can automate the creation of tickets for high-priority vulnerabilities identified by ThreatNG.
ThreatNG's continuous monitoring ensures that vulnerability triage is based on up-to-date information.
ThreatNG provides "Continuous Monitoring of external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings of all organizations". This is essential because the vulnerability landscape is constantly changing.
Example: ThreatNG's continuous monitoring can detect new vulnerabilities or changes in existing ones, ensuring that the vulnerability triage process always works with the latest information.
Complementary Solutions:
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): TIPs can provide real-time information about exploit availability and threat actor activity, which is crucial for assessing the likelihood of vulnerability exploitation during triage.
Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Platforms: SOAR platforms can automate parts of the vulnerability triage process, such as automatically prioritizing vulnerabilities based on ThreatNG's data and threat intelligence feeds.
ThreatNG's investigation modules provide detailed information to aid in vulnerability triage.
These modules provide in-depth information about assets and potential vulnerabilities:
Domain Intelligence: Helps investigate domain-related vulnerabilities.
Code Repository Exposure: Provides details on vulnerabilities related to exposed code.
Mobile Application Discovery: Allows for investigation of vulnerabilities in mobile apps.
Examples:
The "Domain Intelligence" module can help triage vulnerabilities related to subdomains or DNS configurations by providing detailed information about those assets. For example, it includes Domain Overview (Digital Presence Word Cloud, Microsoft Entra Identification and Domain Enumeration, Bug Bounty Programs, and related SwaggerHub instances, which include API documentation and specifications, enabling users to understand and potentially test the API's functionality and structure) and DNS Intelligence (Domain Record Analysis (IP Identification, Vendors and Technology Identification), Domain Name Permutations (Taken and Available), and Web3 Domains (Taken and Available)
The "Sensitive Code Exposure" module provides detailed information about exposed credentials or secrets, enabling security teams to triage these vulnerabilities based on the sensitivity of the exposed data and the potential impact of their compromise.
Complementary Solutions:
Exploit Databases: These databases provide information about known exploits for specific vulnerabilities, which can help assess the likelihood of exploitation during triage.
Network Analysis Tools: These tools can provide network-level information about vulnerability exploitation attempts and inform triage decisions.
ThreatNG's intelligence repositories provide valuable context for vulnerability triage.
These repositories ("DarCache") provide continuously updated information on vulnerabilities and threats:
DarCache Vulnerability: Provides vulnerability data (NVD, EPSS, KEV) and exploits.
DarCache Dark Web: Provides intelligence on dark web activity related to vulnerabilities.
Example: The "DarCache Vulnerability" repository provides information on the availability of exploits (DarCache eXploit) for specific vulnerabilities, a critical factor in assessing the likelihood of exploitation during vulnerability triage.
Complementary Solutions:
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): Integrating with TIPs can provide a broader and more diverse set of threat intelligence, enriching the vulnerability triage process with a broader perspective on potential threats.
Vulnerability Management Platforms: These platforms can use ThreatNG's intelligence to automate vulnerability prioritization and remediation workflows.
ThreatNG offers a comprehensive suite of capabilities that significantly enhance vulnerability triage. By providing detailed external discovery, assessment, reporting, continuous monitoring, investigation modules, and threat intelligence, ThreatNG enables organizations to prioritize and manage their external vulnerabilities effectively. The potential to use ThreatNG alongside complementary solutions further strengthens the vulnerability triage process.
