Vulnerability Management

Transform security weaknesses into strengths

Alter Solutions’ Vulnerability Management service allows businesses to detect, prioritise, and resolve security vulnerabilities before cyberattackers have a chance to exploit them.

 

Talk to an expert

Pentesters researching a company's vulnerabilities

 Alter Solutions' security incident response line: +33 1 87 66 97 36

What is Vulnerability Management?

Vulnerability Management is the continuous process of detecting, assessing, prioritising, and resolving cybersecurity vulnerabilities across an organisation’s system and infrastructure. The objective is to reduce the exposure surface that can be exploited by hackers to access sensitive data or launch damaging cyberattacks.


Vulnerability Management usually consists in scanning the network and the assets to get an overview of all the components of the infrastructure and find their potential weaknesses.


Unaddressed security vulnerabilities can lead to high and unforeseen costs to contain data breaches and other threats. That’s why Vulnerability Management is the first step to strengthen your business’s defences and avoid unnecessary spending, as well as to comply with regulatory standards.

Why invest in Vulnerability Management?

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Awareness of the existing vulnerabilities

The first step towards a strong cybersecurity posture is knowing your weaknesses. If an organisation has visibility on potential threats and vulnerabilities that an attacker could easily take advantage of, then prioritisation and remediation can successfully take place.

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Reduced attack surface

Being aware of your main existing security vulnerabilities allows you to address vulnerable spots in your system and infrastructure more quickly and effectively, thus minimising entry points for potential attackers.

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No unexpected spending

This proactive approach allows organisations to identify weaknesses in their cybersecurity strategy before attackers do, so it is key to prevent excessive costs down the road trying to fight back or contain harmful threats.

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Regulatory compliance

Several industry-specific regulations require businesses to implement vulnerability management programmes, namely in the financial and healthcare sectors. Vulnerability management is also a core part of the ISO 27001 standard, and it allows companies to regularly check the compliance of their infrastructures with their standards.

Vulnerability Management in 5 steps

1
Detect

This is the initial step to pinpoint known vulnerabilities, as well as discover new and potential ones. Alter Solutions uses different techniques for this, depending on each company’s needs and goals, like automated vulnerability scanner software, pentesting and red teaming among others.

2
Prioritise

After identifying vulnerabilities, we categorise them (e.g.: device misconfiguration, outdated software, etc.), determine their risk / criticality level, and prioritise their remediation accordingly.

3
Resolve

Depending on the type of vulnerability at hand, we either proceed to full remediation or mitigation – meaning that if, for some reason, a vulnerability cannot be completely defused, then we make it more difficult to exploit or we mitigate other parts of the infrastructure to reduce its potential impact.

4
Reassess

After addressing top priority vulnerabilities, our security teams circle back to the assessment phase, to make sure that the resolution measures had the desired effect, and that no new vulnerabilities came up in the meantime.

5
Report

As a final step, we compile detailed information about the identified vulnerabilities, the resolution strategy put in place, and the achieved results. This is key for continuous and consistent improvement.

Cyber analyst writing a detailed report about vulnerabilities found in a corporate environment

Common security vulnerabilities

We address the most frequent security vulnerabilities found in corporate environments
Security analysts working on software patches to correct system vulnerabilities

Misconfigurations

Implementing systems, devices, and applications without reviewing default settings, not hardening them or creating holes in their configuration to ease their use can leave room for unauthorised access by cybercriminals.

Social engineering

Deceptive e-mails or messages, containing suspicious links used to deceive users and steal their personal or business data is the most prevalent form of social engineering (aka phishing).

Outdated software

Software patches are made available regularly to correct bugs or security vulnerabilities. Security analysts regularly share exploits of those vulnerabilities, which means that if these patches are not installed in due time, attackers can have access to instantly usable code to take advantage of the vulnerability.

Weak credentials

Without strong password policies in place, it is relatively easy for cyberattackers to crack users’ passwords and gain access to systems and sensitive data.

Weak hardening

Without good hardening policies of a company’s assets, an attacker could leverage those weaknesses to gain access to an equipment, move laterally or elevate their privileges. There are multiple hardening guides and good practices that dive into the possible configurations.

We are qualified partners

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Alter Solutions is a member of InterCERT France, a cybersecurity community which aims to strengthen each member's ability to detect and respond to security incidents

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We are ISO 27001 certified for our work towards information security, cybersecurity and privacy protection. This is the world's best-known standard for Information Security Management Systems (ISMS).

Why Alter Solutions?

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18 years of experience

Alter Solutions was founded in Paris, in 2006, and has since focused on digital transformation. We operate in 8 countries across Europe, America and Africa, and we have been security partners for companies in the manufacturing, service, finance, insurance, transport, and technology sectors for over 10 years.

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Flexibility and customer-centric approach

We provide a level of service tailored to the client's needs, going all the way to a 24/7 protection. We have a strong track record across different sectors and technologies, and our approach to IT services is technology agnostic – what's right for each customer is what counts.

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Privacy as a core value

Both yours and your customers’ data is safe with us. Our Managed Security Service experts operate within the European Union (EU), meaning we fully comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

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Key certifications

Our experts are certified with GCED, GCCC, and OSCP. We also hold relevant security certifications like ISO 27001, and we are part of the cybersecurity community InterCERT France.

Our Managed Security Services

We cover all your organisation’s security needs with other managed security services

Read more about cybersecurity

FAQ

Vulnerability management is a complete and continuous detection and response cycle, while vulnerability assessment is one of the phases of that process, happening within a specific timeframe.

Complex and sophisticated cybersecurity threats keep emerging on a daily basis and businesses are prime targets. To stay ahead of cyberattackers and minimise risks, organisations should be able to detect and address vulnerabilities as early as possible.

Devices and systems’ misconfigurations, weak credential and hardening policies, phishing, unpatched software, among others.

Alter Solutions’ service comprises 5 main phases: (1) detection, (2) prioritisation, (3) resolution, (4) reassessment, and (5) reporting.

We use a variety of cybersecurity solutions ranging from vulnerability scanners and inventory management software to manage vulnerabilities, up to state of the art exploits through our cybersecurity intelligence that allow us to conduct efficient penetration testing and red teaming.

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Fill in our contact form and our dedicated cybersecurity team will get back to you within 24 hours.
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