Utilizing Vulnerability Assessments for Threat Detection

Threat detection is the art of identifying a potential active threat, correlating it to an appropriate set of risks, collecting indicators of compromise (IoC), and initiating the appropriate action. Organizations perform threat detection every day with solutions like anti-virus and behavioral and artificial intelligence analytics. Threat detection occurs at almost every layer within an organization and is one of the primary functions of every single security solution. Threat detection within vulnerability management solutions satisfies the basic use case for identifying vulnerabilities everywhere along an infrastructure stack. To that end, these solutions collect a wide variety of other asset data that can be correlated automatically (or manually) for advanced threat detection use cases, including:

• Operating System – Identification of Shadow IT, end of life, or unsanctioned (rogue) assets
• Hardware – Potentially illegal devices, such as USB removable media or hardware configurations, that may have been compromised
• Ports – Network services that are operating, but are not sanctioned, like FTP or SMTP
• Processes – Inappropriate processes executing due to malware or rogue applications
• Scheduled Tasks – Scheduled automation that does not conform to organizational guidelines or privileges
• Services – Inappropriate services executing due to rogue software and their associated accounts and privileges
• Shares – Inappropriate shares for accessing an asset and their corresponding access control lists
• Software – Software inventory to verify appropriate applications, identification of rogue software, and incorrect versions
• Users – Identification of local user accounts, privileges, and any misappropriation of user and group resources
• Certificates – The identification, expiration, and ownership of system certificates
• Personally Identifiable Information (PII) – The identification of PII within user files and logs
• Malware – The association of hash information from processes and services with known malware

Vulnerability assessment solutions provide threat detection above and beyond missing security patches and flaws. The data can be used to supplement additional indicators of compromise and even form the basis for malicious activity. Consider processing this additional information locally or within a SIEM to bolster your security awareness. If you are looking for a vulnerability management solution that can provide this information, BeyondTrust’s Retina Enterprise Vulnerability Management solutions can discover this information and supplement your security solutions for threat detection. Related Resources The Forrester Wave for Vulnerability Risk Management: BeyondTrust Named a Leader Sample Vulnerability Management Policy Intrusive vs. Non-Intrusive Vulnerability Scanning