It’s no secret that Google is one of the most highly targeted companies for all kinds of cyberattacks. While Google is known to keep a tight grip on its security, the technology giant is taking further action.
Recently, Google created a new team consisting of skilled security engineers to find vulnerabilities within their Android applications. It has dedicated these security engineers to conducting risk assessments, vulnerability assessments, penetration tests, reverse engineering, and code audits. In previous years, Google relied solely on its bug bounty program known as Google Play Security Reward Program (GPSRP) to discover new vulnerabilities within its IT environment. However, due to the increase in the number of cyberattacks, Google realized the need for a vulnerability management team.
Google is not the only company in need of a vulnerability management team. Companies around the world are being faced with more cyberattacks now than ever before. Vulnerability management teams are essential to companies for a variety of reasons:
Proactively searching for new vulnerabilities
Every day, researchers discover new vulnerabilities for a variety of different systems and applications. It is crucial for companies to pay attention to new vulnerabilities and to search for these within their own systems. Having a vulnerability management team allows a company to have a team dedicated solely to finding vulnerabilities and patching them. Often, the vulnerability management team will also conduct threat hunting in order to search their own networks for indicators of compromise.
Verify that the overall security of the organization is improving
The vulnerability management team is also beneficial for providing reports on how the organization's security posture is improving. This team will utilize vulnerability scans to determine if the overall vulnerabilities in the IT environment are increasing or decreasing. The team will assess this increase or decrease by comparing previous months' reports to the current vulnerability reports.
Detecting misconfigured systems
Sometimes, devices can be misconfigured, which can cause them to be vulnerable. However, unlike other vulnerabilities, misconfigurations can be solved by correctly configuring the device so that it is secure. Vulnerability management teams utilize vulnerability scanning to help identify these misconfigured devices and contact the appropriate team to reconfigure them.
Vulnerability management teams are crucial for the security of an organization. Without these teams, many vulnerabilities can go on undiscovered, which can later result in a security incident or a breach. It is necessary to stay consistent with patch management and up-to-date on the latest threat actors and threat vectors. Overall, the vulnerability management team is crucial to all companies, large and small, and will help companies remediate weaknesses and strengthen security.
