Vulnerability Management – Secure Your IT Infrastructure

Vulnerability Management — detect weaknesses before an attacker exploits them

Vulnerability Management (VM) is a continuous process of detecting, assessing, prioritising and remediating weaknesses in IT systems, applications and configurations. Unlike a one-off penetration test, VM runs in a 24/7 cycle — authorised and unauthorised scanners probe the infrastructure, findings are matched against CVE/NVD databases and vendor advisories, and results flow into a ticketing system with assigned ownership and remediation SLAs. The average organisation carries several thousand open vulnerabilities at any given time — without prioritisation based on CVSS, EPSS and business context, the team will be stuck in an endless backlog.

Implementing a VM process delivers three concrete outcomes: reducing MTTR (mean time to remediate) critical vulnerabilities from months to days, a measurable reduction in attack surface, and ready evidence for ISO 27001 (A.8.8 — Management of technical vulnerabilities), NIS2 (art. 21 — risk management measures) and DORA (art. 8 — ICT risk management) audits. Virtline designs and maintains VM processes based on Tenable Nessus, Qualys, Rapid7 InsightVM, OpenVAS and GFI LanGuard — integrating them with existing SIEM, ticketing (Jira, ServiceNow) and patch management workflows.

Benefits of implementing Vulnerability Management

 Smaller attack surface — systematic closure of vulnerabilities exploited by ransomware and APT groups.

 Shorter MTTR — average time to remediate critical vulnerabilities drops from weeks to days through prioritisation and automation.

 Regulatory compliance — documented process covering ISO 27001 A.8.8, NIS2 art. 21, DORA art. 8 and NIS2-implementing national regulations.

 Early detection — vulnerabilities in systems and applications visible to the team before they become an attack target.

 Full attack surface visibility — from on-premises servers through the cloud to workstations and network devices.

 Lower incident cost — proactively closing a vulnerability costs many times less than responding to a ransomware attack.

 Measurable KPIs for management — MTTR, coverage, trend and exposure score dashboards instead of raw CVE lists.

Vulnerability Management platforms we deploy

We select the scanning engine to match the scale, asset type (on-premises, cloud, OT/ICS, web apps) and existing SIEM/ticketing stack. We integrate the VM process with the tools your team already uses.

1. Tenable Nessus and Tenable.io — industry standard for vulnerability scanning, largest plugin database, strong coverage of hybrid environments. Integration with Tenable.sc for larger organisations and executive reporting.

2. Qualys VMDR — cloud platform with native integration of threat intelligence, asset inventory and patch management in a single console. Strong in distributed and multi-cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP).

3. Rapid7 InsightVM — dynamic scoring (Real Risk Score) combines CVSS, exploit availability and vulnerability age. Integration with InsightIDR (SIEM) and Threat Command (TI) within one platform.

4. OpenVAS / Greenbone — open source option for organisations with strict budget policies or needing full control. Deployed with custom scan policies and SIEM reporting.

5. SIEM and ticketing integration — Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, Energy LogServer, Wazuh on the SIEM side, plus Jira, ServiceNow, GLPI on the ticketing side. Vulnerability = automatic ticket with SLA, owner and context.

For whom — Vulnerability Management implementation

Vulnerability management is no longer optional — for entities subject to NIS2, the financial sector under DORA and anyone maintaining ISO 27001, it is a requirement directly written into the regulations. From our practice, VM is especially urgent for organisations that:

• are subject to NIS2 as an essential or important entity
• operate in the financial sector under DORA
• are implementing or maintaining ISO 27001 (control A.8.8)
• manage critical infrastructure or OT/ICS environments
• maintain web applications accessible from the internet
• operate in a hybrid environment (on-premises + public cloud)
• have experienced a security incident or successful phishing/ransomware
• manage a fleet of more than 50 servers or workstations
• work with suppliers and need to document their security posture
• are preparing for a certification audit or TISAX assessment

Vulnerability Management is also an essential component of a CTEM (Continuous Threat Exposure Management) strategy — without VM you cannot build a credible exposure management programme.