What you don’t know about your business is often where you are most weak. Do you ever ask yourself, ‘What is a security vulnerability?’ Do you know the differences between vulnerabilities, exploits, and threats? Answering these questions will help you understand and enhance your business’s security, enhancing your ability to keep up with compliance and regulatory requirements across industries. Building a robust security hygiene will also improve your reputation as a business that cares about the security of your customers.
When you are ready to enhance your business’s security capabilities and cover your most critical security vulnerabilities, give us a call! We are a company that believes all businesses should have a robust security expert at their disposal, and we want to be that expert for you.
What Is a Security Vulnerability?
Security vulnerabilities are a broad term referring to any weakness in your system that bad actors can use. Maybe this interrupts your workday by downing your network; maybe it is used to steal critical data. There are multiple types of vulnerabilities, from employee ignorance to flaws in system security, and outside actors can exploit each vulnerability for nefarious reasons.
What Are the Major Types of Security Vulnerabilities?
So, beyond the basic definition, you want to know exactly what security vulnerabilities look like. This will help you defend yourself and prevent future attacks that could cost you thousands of dollars in man-hours or fines. The three most common types of security weaknesses are:
Porous Defenses
Porous defenses are defense systems that have flaws, allowing outsiders to spoof or fake the required authorizations. However, you verify the identity of who is getting into your system and network, there could be dozens of vulnerabilities, including:
- Social engineering to steal passwords
- Weak passwords
- Not having multi-factor authentication
- Sessions that don’t expire
Risk-Filled Resource Management
Tools and apps that help you manage your resources can be full of vulnerabilities that allow hackers and cyber threats to gain unauthorized access to your information. These critical vulnerabilities can be a part of basic architecture, such as libraries and functions.
- Buffer Overflow: An application with poorly shielded memory can be tricked into reading or writing data past where intended – memory buffers can be exploited to sneak in trojan horses and the like.
- Path Traversal: Some attacks use new pathnames that create backdoors that allow threat actors to access files they shouldn’t be able to see.
Both attacks are common to web applications, and you may have to do regular vulnerability scans to reveal the issues that could pose major risks.
Insecure Interactions
Modern businesses often have distributed architecture, using a wide range of services and processes that all tie together loosely. Many companies have to balance ease of access with zero-trust approaches, which prevents outside actors from getting in by treating every access as a possible threat. But when you tie together so many different systems, insecure connections might lead to vulnerabilities:
- Cross-site scripting (XSS): When automating processes or tying together applications, like social media management or other management tools, malicious scripts can be slipped in with trusted and verified data, leading to a threat being given trust and access to critical systems.
- Cross-site request forgery (CSRF): With social engineering attacks in which a person is tricked into giving away passwords or access through catfishing and impersonation, a cyber-criminal can forge authentic requests that allow them to get inside systems without any fancy attacks or tools.
Zero-trust security controls are one of the best ways to cover common vulnerabilities and exposures, but you must follow this up with regular security training for your employees. Otherwise, simple impersonation and phishing will be unavoidable.
How You Can Find and Fix Security Vulnerabilities
With a trusted IT management partner, you can receive comprehensive security advisement, including risk assessment, employee education, and remediation of potential risk factors. There are two major methods that most IT management companies will use to help you remain safe:
Vulnerability Management Programs
Vulnerability management programs are one of the best ways to cover your bases and ensure that your organization covers the best practices for fixing vulnerabilities. These programs involve everyone in your business and have some interaction with:
- Vulnerability scanning and risk assessment
- Development of answers
- Deployment of responses
- Analysis of your system’s moving parts.
This educational and systematic approach will involve more people than simply leveraging an IT team. An outside perspective from an IT advisor or IT management company can also fill in critical gaps.
Tools for Security Vulnerability Remediation
Common tools used to implement and enhance your security include:
- Software Composition Analysis (SCA): Tools that look at your systems and tools, locating risk factors
- Static and Dynamic Application Security Tools (SAST/DAST): Conduct vulnerability assessment on uncompiled and executable code.
- Open-Source Vulnerability Scanners: Tools maintained by users, with faster response and flexibility for remediation.
Get IT Vulnerabilities Covered With PC Professional’s Help!
Cyber threats are a huge factor in modern businesses. From remote workers to distant vendors, you rely on digital frameworks for everything in your day-to-day life, even your personal life. But all of this technology time and digital architecture creates potential avenues of attack for cyber-threats. These security vulnerabilities are why you need to work with a trusted digital management team that can educate, provide tools, and cover your most critical weaknesses.
PC Professional’s robust network of tools and vendors can provide an incredible improvement to your business’s most critical vulnerabilities, saving you thousands of dollars in lost person-hours and compliance mistakes by covering vulnerabilities and establishing high-quality systems and processes for your business – call us today to get started!
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