Putting Your Full Stack Vulnerability Management Solution into Action – Three Practical Suggestions

With power comes responsibility. Leverage all the value of your new Single Full Stack Vulnerability Management Platform with these three tips.

So Many Compelling Reasons to go Full Stack with Your Vulnerability Management Program

You finally have decided to take the plunge. There are so many good reasons to go full-stack. Let’s remind ourselves of some of the important ones:

1. Tool Proliferation – You are not alone. Gartner has told us that Enterprises on average have 16 tools in the Vulnerability Management Portfolio and 12% have 46 or more! (Gartner’s Top Security and Risk Trends for 2021)
2. Consolidated View of Risk – The most obvious benefit – if you consolidate the full stack then your single unified dashboard will provide you with a consolidated picture of your risk.
3. Lower Overhead and Lower Costs – Licensing costs are typically significantly lower for one solution and the overhead to support separate tools is dramatically reduced.
4. Operational Efficiency – With one solution then there will be only one system generating tickets across the entire stack. This means only one place with consistent reporting to source alerts without a Business Intelligence tool and far easier integration to your own IT support system.
5. Resilience – While Cost Reduction might initially be the driver – the same Gartner Report concludes that consolidation delivers lower risk.

Three Practical Suggestions

Here are three top-of-mind items you should be considering when you first adopt a full-stack solution:

Number 1 – Be Smart About Pilots

Do not cherry-pick one layer from a Single Full Stack Solution Vendor – that misses the point. Instead, pilot with a singular, full-stack solution that incorporates several layers. If you are concerned about over-investing in a solution in the pilot phase, then perhaps scope the pilot within only one business division or one geography to validate a single multi-layered experience.

Bonus List – The Layers You Should Consider

In the context of Vulnerability Management – what exactly constitutes a “full-stack”?

1. Web application layer (including APIs, Website, and Mobile)
2. Hosting Environment layer (Web Application Server)
3. Operating System of the Host
4. Host Machine Services (Network Protocol and Services and Ports)
5. Underlying Network (Associated Devices including IoT, Firewalls, Routers)

Number 2 – Leverage Your New Enlightened View of Risk

Risk is not linear – how one communicates risk is traditionally challenging. One thousand issues with a score of 1 (Between a score of one to one hundred) yields a risk score of 1000 as opposed to one issue ranked at 98. But it’s that one 98-ranked issue that could present a significant issue for your business.

With your new composite view of risk, you can build your platform to alert you on say a considerable business concern like the 98-score vulnerability. Basically, with a full-stack single solution, you can build weighted alerts, regardless of the layer location, to signal what matters the most. And that’s the whole point of the approach – to gain that holistic view.

Number 3 – Correlations are Key

Remember, you now have a prepackaged singular solution. No more manual attempts at linking vulnerability source data from layer to layer. So, things like correlating a network issue with web application issues are now easily attainable. It’s much more intuitive with a combined view of risk against the entire full-stack. Indeed, your composite correlation-detecting viewpoint puts you on a level playing field (if not a superior position) to your attacker.

If you would like to learn more about Full Stack Vulnerability Solutions, click below to download your free white paper