Trustwave Blog

Protect your IT assets through Managed Vulnerability Scanning | Trustwave

Written by | May 30, 2023

Managed vulnerability scanning is a cybersecurity service that uses software, vulnerability scanners, and other tools to help an organization identify, track, evaluate, and mitigate security risks both inside their network and connected external sources.

Even organizations with the most sophisticated information technology security professionals are challenged when dealing with the hundreds of new threats released into the wild each month.

Enterprise networks are susceptible to problems such as software flaws and configuration issues, so security professionals need to identify, classify, remediate, and mitigate the weaknesses that attackers could exploit to access your data. Continuous vulnerability scanning is a critical requirement for effective cyber defense, according to industry analysts. 

A well-designed MVS service will help relieve this pain by managing all aspects of the vulnerability scanner that is provided by either the client or vendor.

This includes setting up, scheduling, running scans, reviewing results, and sharing reports or insights in line with the preferred security processes to achieve the client’s security goals. MVS provides clients with enhanced scanning capabilities with increased security outcomes at the enterprise level. 

 

The Challenges Associated with Conducting Vulnerability Scanning

Chief information officers, (CIO), chief information security officers (CISO) and cybersecurity professionals must have the ability to identify, classify, remediate, or mitigate vulnerabilities that attackers could successfully exploit to access valuable data.

This activity is difficult because most organizations lack insight into network vulnerabilities and may have exposure to attack and/or compromise from both outside and inside the corporate firewall.

Added issues that must be dealt with are the ability to properly scan critical infrastructure. This lack of insight can be correlated to having too few resources to do the “heavy lifting” when it comes to reporting for different levels of audience, creating dashboards, and prioritizing for risk management.

 

How Trustwave Conducts Managed Vulnerability Scanning

Trustwave utilizes a battle-tested, human-led methodology for conducting Managed Vulnerability Scanning with the primary goals of:

  • Delivering visibility into IT assets and associated vulnerabilities
  • Saving time and resources by chasing fewer false positive results
  • Reducing risk by focusing resources on the most significant vulnerabilities

Trustwave’s Managed Vulnerability Scanning solution offers a wide array of solutions from which clients can pick and choose to scan their databases, networks and applications.

A client can choose to have any single or all three areas scanned, and the scanning can be conducted at four frequencies one-time, weekly, monthly, or quarterly.

Trustwave’s MVS offering is a programmatic approach to vulnerability management and manages all aspects of the vulnerability scanner to achieve the Client’s security goals. The service includes:

  • Set up
  • Scheduling running scans
  • Reviewing results
  • Sharing agreed reports.

In addition to this, Trustwave will assist in:

  • Providing visibility into high and critical vulnerabilities
  • Defining organizations risk posture
  • Identifying visibility into IT assets and associated vulnerabilities.

Network Scanning - Trustwave Network Scanning provides insight into an organization’s network vulnerabilities and where the client’s network may be exposed to compromises from within and outside the corporate firewall.

External Vulnerability Scanning -Regularly scheduled or ad-hoc in-the-cloud, external scanning offers insight into what vulnerabilities are being exposed through the firewall to the outside world. As needed, vulnerability reports can be provided by the expert Trustwave SpiderLabs MVS team.

Internal Vulnerability Scanning -Internal scanning offers the same industry leading vulnerability technology as external scanning, providing you with a hacker’s view of vulnerabilities inside the network behind your firewall. Trustwave Managed Vulnerability Scanning is available as a managed scanning service, part of Trustwave Managed Security Testing service.

Application Scanning - Assess applications prior to deployment or test them in production and protect these front doors to your sensitive data.

Database Scanning - Trustwave Database Security solutions help you gain visibility into and protect the lifeblood of your business – your data – regardless of where it is created, stored or processed.

In addition to Trustwave Managed Vulnerability Scanning, the following services are available:

  • Managed Network Scanning
  • Internal/External Network Penetration Testing
  • Internal/External Managed Application Penetration Testing

 

Optional Add-On Services

Fine-tuning False-Positives - As part of our Fine-tuning False-positive service, Trustwave will review all findings generated from the Scanner and remove any false positives that can be removed by product functionality available. From there, we will present certain findings for additional review.

On-Demand Scans - The On-Demand scans service is based on clients request for on-demand vulnerability scans as new threats emerge in your network environment or when new assets are deployed.

Threat Vulnerability Manager (Advisor) - Trustwave Vulnerability Manager will provide clients with a single point of contact who will guide them through vulnerability process, provide context to vulnerability reports, and customize details of the scanner to the environment. This single point of contact will make exchanging information between Trustwave and you more efficient and increase effectiveness in remediating vulnerabilities.