In a rapidly changing threat environment, it becomes increasingly challenging for organizations to identify, prioritize, remediate or mitigate software and system vulnerabilities. This challenge is exacerbated by the continued shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals.
In this context, cybersecurity teams need accessible, effective vulnerability management solutions that help scale security efforts to protect the business without adding additional staff. This also includes layered security solutions beyond vulnerability scanning that work in concert to improve team efficiency and security effectiveness.
The 2022 Vulnerability Management Report is based on a comprehensive survey of over 390 cybersecurity professionals in September 2022 to gain insights into the latest trends, key challenges, and solution preferences for vulnerability management.
Key findings include:
• While a majority of organizations (71%) run a formal vulnerability management program in-house, only about a third consider their program very effective (30%).
• Budget constraints are the biggest barrier to better vulnerability management (60%), followed by the perennial skills shortage (45%) and ineffective vulnerability management processes (36%).
• IoT and OT devices (65%) top the list of infrastructure requiring better vulnerability management, followed by cloud assets (44%) and endpoints (41%).
• Only about a third of organizations deploy patches within three days of availability (29%) – another third take between three days and two weeks (35%), the rest up to a month or more.
• While most organizations experienced an increase in vulnerabilities over the past 12 months (76%), only about a third (30%) expect an increase in staffing for vulnerability management.
• The good news: 44% of organizations expect an increase in investment for vulnerability management solutions.
• When evaluating solutions, cybersecurity professionals prioritize accuracy of vulnerability detection (79%), followed by analytics features (63%) and cost of ownership (59%). Vulnerability assessment (70%) tops the list of required features, followed by asset discovery (66%), vulnerability scanning (63%), and risk management features (61%).
We would like to thank Digital Defense and Beyond Security by HelpSystems, global leaders in vulnerability management solutions, for supporting this important research. We hope you find this report informative and helpful as you continue your efforts in protecting your organizations against evolving threats.
