The Future of the NopSec Platform: The Security Insights Platform for Cyber Threat Exposure Management

Security Data Analysis is Hindering Vulnerability Management Program Effectiveness

Vulnerability management is a vital process for any organization that wants to proactively protect their IT assets and systems from cyber attacks. It is a complex and challenging process that requires resources, skills, and coordination to maintain a mature Vulnerability Management program.

Over the last several quarters, NopSec has interviewed a wide array of customers and security practitioners. In doing so, we’ve come away with a critical observation that is limiting VM program maturity: Security teams struggle with a lack of meaningful insights to assess performance and drive action.

Many organizations struggle to oversee their Vulnerability Management program effectively.  The reason for this stems from data analysis limitations. Data segmented across a disparate security technology stack, limited resources with data analysis skills, or the inability to derive actionable takeaways from meaningful insights are common themes among Security teams. Any combination of these factors is a recipe for little or no success. Security performance insights can quickly become unattainable if budgets are tight, resources are limited, and focus is pinpointed on tactical needs vs strategic needs.

The Security Insights Platform

These observations are driving innovation of the NopSec platform. The NopSec platform has long been an aggregator of security data for your entire technology stack. For years we’ve provided a centralized console for Security Analysts and Remediation Teams to perform real-time prioritization and operationalize remediation workflows. Our machine-learning algorithms and Remediation Plans have made this possible, leading to better collaboration and execution of your Vulnerability Management program. We’ve historically provided analytical tools as part of our functionality as well, but going forward we are doubling down on this value offering.

Today, we’re excited to announce Insights! We’ve already released a handful of new security analytics Insights to empower practitioners this year, but we’re just getting started. Our Insights offering will contain a growing list of focused pages and reports where NopSec will augment your teams with our data science capabilities. We’ll provide you actionable insights leveraging the latest machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities without the cost of staffing, hiring, or maintaining a data science team yourself. 

We have committed to an aggressive release plan to bring numerous Insights features to market over the next few years. You will undoubtedly come to know NopSec as the insights platform for vulnerability management, responsible for telling you what you don’t know and why it matters most.

What is Insights and how does it work?

Insights is a set of pages and reports which are focused on a particular question. They aim to provide metrics, insights, and actions for you to take based on your unique data.

Insights work by collecting your vulnerability data from across your integrations. Insights then applies advanced algorithms and models to analyze and interpret your data. The end results are actionable insights generated and relevant to you. Insights is presented in an intuitive and interactive interface depending on the data and intended analysis where you can easily explore, filter, and drill into your data.

What are the benefits of using Insights?

Insights can help you:

• Reduce your need for manual analysis and interpretation of your data.
• Enhance and improve your vulnerability management outcomes and impact.
• Focus on the most important and urgent issues first.
• Validate your assumptions with data.
• Demonstrate the value and ROI of your vulnerability management program.

What are the Insights available now?

Today, clients can view the following Insight pages:

• Celebrity Vulnerabilities – Celebrity Vulnerabilities are vulnerabilities that NopSec’s security research team has identified, either through NopSec’s threat intelligence or through manual research, to be vulnerabilities that are critical for our clients to know about. These vulnerabilities tend to be widespread across industries, used in active attacks, and are seen to be some of the most risky vulnerabilities. Not all Celebrity Vulnerabilities apply to every network so this Insights page quickly highlights if any of these vulnerabilities are in your network or not. You can then determine if any of them are already being managed by your teams via remediation plans or exception plans. This allows you to determine if any of these items should be prioritized in your program.

• CISA KEV – CISA is a government organization that provides a list of known exploited vulnerabilities they believe are important for all government organizations to remediate as quickly as possible. They set a date for each vulnerability by which they will hold government organizations accountable for. We’ve seen other non-governmental organizations adopt this list as a way to prioritize their efforts. This Insights page will identify your vulnerabilities that are categorized as CISA KEV and sort them by the items not already managed (in plans) and that are due soon. Allowing you to determine if any items need to be prioritized in your program.

• Team Performance – Every organization wants to be able to measure the performance of their vulnerability program. Are you remediating faster than you are identifying new vulnerabilities? Are you getting faster or slower over time? In order to place context to these questions, especially in larger organizations, it becomes important to understand how individual Teams are performing. Each Team is typically given a scope of responsibility over targets and vulnerabilities. Are they able to meet their goals with the resources they have? How are they doing compared to other like-sized or scoped Teams? Why are some Teams performing better than others? Is it resourcing, scope, difficulty, or something else? Team’s Performance gives you insight into these topics.

What’s coming?

NopSec will continue to release Insights every quarter that are based on what clients are asking for. Known items scheduled for this year include (but are not limited to):

• Exceptions Insights
• Velocity Insights
• Root Cause Analysis
• Scanner Health
• Tenant Health

Ready to try Insights?

Insights is a powerful tool and easy-to-use feature that will help you oversee and manage a complex vulnerability management program. You will be able to validate your assumptions through data, identify trends that can impact your goals, or allow you to better prepare for future complexities. 

Whether you are an Executive Leader in the organization, a Security Analyst, or an IT Remediation team member, Insights will help you improve your vulnerability management and reduce your risk exposure.

If you would like to see more of our Insights in action, join our monthly recurring platform walkthrough! You’ll get a no-pressure demo of the feature and platform. Our Director of Solutions Engineering will happily answer any questions you have about how this new functionality could improve your remediation efforts. Register for the webinar here!