Organizations are constantly faced with new information. From software updates to patches and threat bulletins, understanding and properly managing vulnerabilities requires a significant amount of attention and resources. Attackers and their victims have access to the same information. By not proactively scanning for vulnerabilities and remediating security flaws, the likelihood of an attacker compromising an organization’s system is very high.

Implementing a vulnerability management tool can help you spot any holes in your environment that could potentially be exploited by an attacker before a breach occurs.

Vulnerability management is the cyclical practice of identifying, classifying, prioritizing, remediating, and mitigating software vulnerabilities. Vulnerability management is integral to computer security and network security.

A vulnerability assessment is a systematic review of security weaknesses in an information system. It evaluates if the system is susceptible to any known vulnerabilities, assigns severity levels to those vulnerabilities, and recommends remediation or mitigation, if and whenever needed.