5.3. Vulnerability Management

💡 First Principle: Every major breach in the last decade exploited a known, patchable vulnerability. Vulnerability management is the continuous cycle of finding, evaluating, and fixing weaknesses before attackers exploit them. It's not a one-time scan — it's an ongoing discipline. The Equifax breach (147 million records) happened because a known vulnerability went unpatched for two months. Vulnerability management is the process that prevents that scenario.

What happens without systematic vulnerability management? Vulnerabilities accumulate silently. New CVEs are published daily — over 25,000 per year. Without a process to identify which ones affect your environment, prioritize by risk, and remediate in a timely manner, you're racing against attackers and losing. Organizations without vulnerability management don't know what's vulnerable until it's breached.

Think of it like maintaining a fleet of vehicles: you don't wait for the engine to fail — you schedule inspections, prioritize by vehicle age and usage, fix critical issues immediately, and track everything. Vulnerability management applies the same discipline to IT systems.

Loading diagram...

Each step depends on the one before it — skipping analysis leads to patching low-risk systems while critical ones remain exposed. Skipping validation means you think you're patched but aren't.