Infrastructure Security - Vulnerability Management

Vulnerability is a weakness in a system that can be exploited and leveraged upon by different threat agents. In computer security, vulnerabilities can exist in information systems ranging from operating systems to databases to web servers to web applications to switches to routers to even security solutions and devices. Vulnerabilities can occur and are exploited because of lack of security focus during application and system development, reliance on protocols that are vulnerable or because of dependency on third party packages and services.

Vulnerability management solutions help automate the process of proactively identifying vulnerabilities in systems and evaluate associated risks so that proper and prioritized vulnerability remediation and risk mitigation can be carried out before a threat agent exploits these vulnerabilities. Vulnerability management solutions are not mere vulnerability assessment tools but on top they provide features like organization specific risk, risk acceptance, risk tracking, ticketing system, and user roles and permissions to name a few.

Vulnerability management solutions apart from reducing the threat exposure due to prevalent vulnerabilities also help in meeting compliance requirements for PCI DSS, FISA, HIPAA and CIS standards for vulnerability and configuration management. The central vulnerability management console supports identification of vulnerabilities on multiple systems, devices and web applications deployed in organizations and remain future proof with regular updates. Role creation can help different departments to fulfill their responsibilities related to vulnerability identification, infrastructure auditing and web application testing with ease and effectiveness via intuitive dashboard and actionable reporting.

Vulnerability management solutions also provide the ability to test the effectiveness of existing controls on servers and desktops like anti-virus, OS hardening and patch management, browser hardening, password hardening etc. The ease of validating vulnerabilities via itself or third party exploitation tools makes vulnerability management solutions unique and help improve risk mitigation efforts.

Endpoint Security - Malware Protection

In computer security, the general definition of an endpoint is any device connecting to the network. When talking about endpoint security, the device can be a mobile device, a laptop, a workstation or even a server. Endpoint security is hence securing of these devices by mostly using technology based solutions. One of the important tasks involved in endpoint security is protecting endpoints from malware. Malware is any malicious program that can adversely affect, disrupt and damage the working of the endpoint and on top of that steal sensitive information. The most common types of malware are viruses, worms, Trojans, adware and spyware.

Endpoint security technology solutions provide different set of features that can help in detection and prevention of malware. Apart from detection and prevention, endpoint security also helps in remediating the compromised endpoints. The features provided by endpoint security solutions range from antivirus, personal firewall, exploit prevention, host intrusion prevention to proactive protection capabilities like vulnerability and patch management.

Endpoint security solutions target both known (for which signatures have been created) and unknown (for which signatures are not available yet) malware. The effectiveness of endpoint security solutions against malware detection, prevention and spreading depends on solution configuration apart from the technology and intelligence incorporated into the solution. The endpoint security technology solutions provide easy centralized management. The centralized management helps in getting visibility into the level of security and system health of all endpoints. The centralized management also supports in easy security policy implementation, updating, reporting of critical system events and troubleshooting.