If you don’t know about your security vulnerabilities, you won’t be able to defend against them, but rest assured that attackers will find them quickly enough. While zero-day vulnerabilities may sound the most threatening (and they are indeed major threats), most breaches involve attackers exploiting known vulnerabilities in unpatched software.
For businesses to achieve proper cybersecurity, they must ensure that all endpoints and applications are patched and protected. As such, it’s time to explore how IT teams can detect and remediate software vulnerabilities before they are exploited, reducing the likelihood of security incidents.
How Vulnerable Software Slips Through the Cracks
While companies typically have IT and security teams focused on ensuring their security is up to date and maintaining IT compliance, it is still possible for software vulnerabilities to slip through. Several factors can contribute to these oversights, ranging from human error to technical limitations to imperfect policies, so a vulnerability can go unnoticed and unpatched for various reasons.
For instance, incomplete software inventories or shadow IT devices are common causes of vulnerabilities going unnoticed. If an IT team is unaware of a device or application, they can’t patch it. Maintaining a complete, up-to-date inventory and ensuring employees aren’t using their own devices or unapproved software behind IT’s back can help prevent these oversights.
Similarly, IT teams need visibility into third-party applications to ensure they are properly patched and updated. Many patching solutions focus on endpoints but not applications, making the applications prime targets for attackers.
On the technical end, delayed patch cycles can be dangerous. The longer it takes to patch a vulnerability, the more time attackers have to exploit it, so relying on patch cycles without real-time updates creates a security risk. Likewise, if companies use disconnected tools that don’t share risk context, it’s harder to keep each endpoint fully secured and up to date.
Why Traditional Detection Methods Are Not Enough
While traditional vulnerability detection tools were effective for their time, the modern threat environment has evolved to the point where they’re no longer adequate.
For instance, traditional methods often involve periodic scans. While these can detect vulnerabilities and breaches, they only show point-in-time data, whereas real-time detection is necessary to respond quickly to threats. Similarly, manual tracking through spreadsheets and alerts is not only too slow but also prone to human error. The goal is to minimize the time between infection, detection, and remediation, which traditional tools can’t do.
Many older tools also lack the depth and insights that businesses require. Some traditional detection tools focus on operating system vulnerabilities, completely ignoring applications that may be at risk. These can also have limited insights into which devices are actually exposed, making remediation difficult.
What Proactive Vulnerability Detection Looks Like
Compare traditional vulnerability detection to modern, proactive detection tools. While older methods are prone to human error, delayed remediation, and missed applications, today’s vulnerability detection software can quickly and efficiently identify and address risks while maintaining security.
Proactive vulnerability detection includes:
Continuous software inventory across all endpoints, updated in real-time to ensure no device or application is overlooked.
Real-time visibility into software versions and patch status so IT teams can verify their patch statuses and security.
CVE mapping to known vulnerabilities and severity levels to identify severe threats so they can quickly be addressed, including prioritization based on real-world exploit risk.
Quick remediation following detection, thanks to Smart Actions and CVE-powered insights.
How Splashtop AEM Detects Vulnerable Software
When you want a powerful endpoint management solution that can detect and remediate vulnerabilities in real-time, Splashtop AEM (Autonomous Endpoint Management) has the answer.
Splashtop AEM provides real-time insight into and management over distributed endpoints, reducing blind spots and empowering IT teams to secure all their devices and applications.
Splashtop AEM includes:
Automated software inventory across operating systems and endpoints, so you’ll never have to worry about overlooking an application.
CVE insights that identify known vulnerabilities and provide suggestions for remediating them.
Third-party application visibility that gives you insights into common attack targets, such as browsers and collaboration tools.
Unified dashboards that provide visibility into each of your endpoints and help identify vulnerable software at a glance.
Real-time updates so you don’t leave devices or applications vulnerable during patching cycles, ensuring real-time compliance and security.
Step-by-Step: How to Detect Vulnerable Software Early
So, how can you use Splashtop AEM to quickly detect software vulnerabilities? All it takes is a few quick steps, and you can set up Splashtop AEM to provide security and vulnerability management across all your endpoints:
Deploy the Splashtop AEM agent across each endpoint you manage.
Review the software inventory and identify unmanaged or outdated applications.
Identify and flag high-risk software via CVE-based insights.
Prioritize vulnerabilities by severity and exposure, according to the rules you establish.
Once Splashtop AEM is set up, you can track vulnerable software across your organization’s devices, endpoints, and applications to identify risks and patterns, and automatically deploy patches upon release.
Measuring the Impact of Early Detection
While the threats for not detecting vulnerabilities are clear, we can also look at the benefits of early detection. While maintaining cybersecurity and IT compliance are important in and of themselves, the subsequent benefits should not be overlooked.
First, early detection leads to less exposure to high-risk vulnerabilities, as it empowers IT teams to address them before they can be exploited. This also contributes to a faster mean time to remediation, as vulnerabilities and exposures can be identified and fixed far faster than they could be otherwise.
These benefits, in turn, lead to a reduction in emergency patching events. After all, there’s no need for emergency patches if the vulnerabilities are addressed before they become an emergency. Similarly, they reduce the likelihood of incident response escalation, as incidents can be cut off at the source.
All this also contributes to improved audit readiness, since you can demonstrate IT compliance and high levels of security. With features like Splashtop AEM’s visibility and reporting tools, you can automatically generate reports for audits that show compliance across all your endpoints.
Detect Early to Prevent Incidents with Splashtop AEM
Security incidents begin far before the first cyberattack. When a software vulnerability is discovered, it becomes a race against the clock to patch it before it can be exploited, and the best way to do that is with a solution that provides detection and remediation features, like Splashtop AEM.
With Splashtop AEM, you’ll gain visibility into each of your endpoints and their applications, as well as the automation you need to stay ahead of threats. With Splashtop AEM’s automated threat detection and CVE-powered insights, you can identify vulnerabilities, automatically roll out patches, and ensure security compliance across your network.
Splashtop AEM gives IT teams the tools and technology they need to monitor endpoints, proactively address issues, and reduce their workloads. This includes:
Automated patching for OS, third-party, and custom apps.
AI-powered CVE-based vulnerability insights.
Customizable policy frameworks that can be enforced throughout your network.
Hardware and software inventory tracking and management across all endpoints.
Alerts and remediation to automatically resolve issues before they become problems.
Background actions to access tools like task managers and device managers without interrupting users.
Ready to bring speed and security to all your endpoints? Try Splashtop AEM today to detect vulnerabilities before they become incidents.
