Network vulnerability assessment is an extremely important task as it helps you locate your critical assets’ weak spots and take timely corrective measures, before any of those are exploited by attackers to steal confidential data or harm your business.
Even if you keep your security controls updated, regular application updates and alterations to the system and application configurations can cause vulnerabilities, leaving you open to an attack. It’s very important to regularly scan your devices and systems, to detect any vulnerabilities as they arise and to maintain security of your data.
Once you uncover such vulnerabilities, you must assess the possible threat posed by each one of them and then prioritize the remediation activities accordingly. This task will involve the following aspects:
- The sensitivity and business-criticality of the vulnerable asset
- If any exploits or intrusions have already been attempted on the concerned asset
- How attackers in the wild are exploiting the vulnerability presently