“What is my attack surface?”
Consider all of your internet-accessible software, hardware, and cloud assets. It’s all the points of vulnerability within a system that hackers can exploit. The wider the surface—the more opportunity for hackers to exploit.
Spotting and eliminating these vulnerabilities toughen access for unauthorized parties.
If you think you have a small attack surface, consider that your attack surface grows organically.
It expands through third-party software, bad passwords, disabled firewalls, phishing campaigns, delayed patching, human errors, legacy assets, and maybe other ways you don’t know about.
Hackers are targeting a broad range of industries: financial and banking institutions, manufacturing, schools and universities, tech companies, healthcare providers, and even government agencies. They’re not only targeting the big names—they’re also going after smaller businesses.
As online theft and hacking have evolved, so have your defense strategies.
When you manage your attack surface with the right security controls in place—you shrink it—along with the likelihood of facing beaches by hackers.
Your security is not a one-time event. It’s an ongoing process that includes consistent patching and vulnerability remediation procedures.
What can you do to patch and scan while protecting your time, eliminating manual processes, and working on the more challenging parts of security?
Below are ways to handle patching and scanning that save time, remove manual processes, and free you to take on the more exciting intricacies of security and business.
The Best Way to Customize My Patch Deployment
Patching is the process of upgrading software so that it can be used safely on a computer system. It fixes flaws or improves functionality. It’s like applying a band-aid to a wound, covering the vulnerabilities in your software systems that hackers could potentially exploit.
Like an annual flu shot that adapts to new virus strains, patching updates your software to defend against the latest threats.
Ever wonder when the best time is to schedule the next patch?
You need to protect employee productivity, downtime, and costs.
It’s why so many teams rely on automation to schedule deployments in recurring maintenance windows.
When done consistently, patching reduces your attack surface. Up-to-date software locks the door against threats. Automation continually works in the background to prioritize and patch the most critical vulnerabilities, all while monitoring any changes in your attack surface.
Is Self-Aware Security Remediation the Future?
What is your weakest link?
How do you fix them… and quickly?
Vulnerability scanning is a proactive practice—and not one that’s easy to do manually, either. Your vulnerabilities are spread across software, systems, networks, and devices.
With so many devices (and probably not enough time), you need a way to regularly scan for security gaps, misconfigurations, patch updates, and other exploitable points across your entire attack surface.
What devices do I need to target?
How do I figure out what to do with them?
When do I do it?
How often?
Automated remediation takes care of it for you through customized access policies and remediation workflows.
Security teams have been looking to offload manual processes to work on more challenging and exciting parts of security, but they don’t want to compromise the quality of protection.
When live data and monitoring communicate and react to behavioral and state changes on your endpoints, automation can remediate vulnerabilities as they’re discovered. Thousands of devices can now self-heal and self-manage, leading to fewer avenues of invasion, and less risk of successful attacks.
Here’s What to Expect With Personalized Automation
Patching and remediation are just one aspect of a comprehensive security strategy. A multi-layered approach includes a little bit of everything: training your staff, regular audits, and strong access controls.
The best way to keep your organization secure is to understand the state of your network at all times. But you can’t be everywhere, all the time.
Automated patch and vulnerability management tools handle updating and addressing weaknesses, reducing the time and effort required by teams to “DIY.” It’s everywhere, all the time, for you.
The security industry is moving toward a more personal, automated approach to cybersecurity. Personalized automation lets you focus on strategy, not administration. It’s not just about making your work easier. It’s about giving you more time to do what matters most: solving problems, protecting people, and making the world a better place.
It’s never been easier to develop and manage automated workflows for patching, vulnerability scanning, endpoint management, and remediation to get more done and safeguard your valuable assets. Schedule a demo to find out how.
