News We are Working with Esteemed Law Enforcement Agencies to Fight Cybercrimes

Understand Vulnerability Management in Cyber Security

author
Published By Stephen Mag
admin
Approved By Admin
Calendar
Published On August 12th, 2025
Calendar
Reading Time 4 Min Read

A DFIR engineer who’s always knee-deep in logs, alerts, and way too much coffee. One of the most important parts of our job (and honestly, the most overlooked) is vulnerability management. It’s not just about patching stuff randomly; it’s a full process. Thought I’d share how I usually approach it, hope this helps someone starting out!

Vulnerability Management Meaning

Vulnerability management is an ongoing process of identifying, assessing, prioritizing, and fixing security weaknesses in any organization. During the Vulnerability management process, DFIR engineers analyze systems, networks, and applications to reduce the risk of cyberattacks.

Read Similar: Is VAPT Mandatory for ISO 27001?

Step 1: Know What’s Out There (Asset Discovery)

First thing’s first—you can’t protect what you don’t even know exists. So, we start with scanning the network, listing every asset—laptops, servers, printers, even weird smart TVs someone plugged into the network (yes, it happens). Once we have that, we gather info like:

  • What OS is running?
  • What services are open?
  • Any outdated stuff still hanging around?

It helps us get a sense of what kind of holes could be exploited.

Step 2: Build the Normal (Baseline)

Now that we got the map, we try to understand what “normal” looks like. This baseline tells us what’s expected behavior and what’s… not. Like, if a dev server suddenly starts talking to the finance DB—yeah, that’s not good.

Also, we schedule automatic scans regularly to catch new stuff without needing to do manual checks all the time. Tools help, but you still gotta know what you’re looking at.

Step 3: Organize the Chaos (Asset Grouping)

Not all assets are equal. Your intern’s test VM doesn’t have the same weight as your production database. So, we sort things into groups or units based on the business function. Each group gets a value—how critical it is for the company’s daily ops.

This step helps later when deciding what to fix first (and what can wait).

Step 4: Risk Evaluation in Vulnerability Management

After grouping, we start looking at risks per group. We mix together things like:

  • How serious is the vulnerability
  • What kind of threats target it
  • And how important that asset is

So a high-severity vuln on a low-priority device might not be urgent. But a medium bug on a mission-critical asset? That’s top of the list.

This part’s where we basically decide what’s dangerous and what’s just noise.

Step 5: Make It Make Sense (Reporting)

Once we got all that info, time to report it properly. Not just for techies, but also for managers and non-security folks. We try to explain:

  • What vulnerabilities exist
  • What kind of risks they cause to the business
  • If we’ve noticed weird or shady activity
  • And what we plan to do about it

Clear reports help the whole company stay in sync and take the right actions.

Step 6: Fixing Things (Remediation)

This is where the rubber meets the road. Based on risk and asset value, we sort the issues and go after the most important ones first. We apply patches, change configs, block ports— whatever’s needed.

Also, we make sure to keep track of what we fixed, when, and if it actually worked.

Final Thoughts

Vulnerability management is a cycle—not a one-and-done thing. You gotta discover, group, evaluate, report, and fix. And then do it again. It’s not flashy work, but it’s the stuff that keeps attackers out.

Anyway, that’s how I usually roll when it comes to vuln management. Every org is different, but having a process (even a messy one) is way better than winging it.