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Hackuity’s Pierre Samson gives advice on how to leave old-school vulnerability management behind in the new year.
As 2024 races toward its close, vulnerabilities continue to mount at an alarming rate. More than 34,000 new common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) have been reported to the National Vulnerable Database (NVD) so far this year, and there is no sign of things slowing down into 2025.
With this constant barrage of potential threats, old-school vulnerability management (VM) strategies aren’t cutting it. With critical assets at stake, security teams need a more innovative, streamlined approach to stay ahead. From automating manual processes to tackling regulatory shifts, here are the key VM challenges to overcome for a more secure, resilient 2025.
Goodbye spreadsheets, hello automation
Let’s face it: if your vulnerability management still relies on a spreadsheet, it’s well past time for a tech upgrade. Yes, Excel has its uses, but manually editing endless rows and columns doesn’t cut it anymore when it comes to safeguarding an organisation from cyberthreats. Today’s security teams are already spread too thin to waste time on manual, labour-intensive and error-prone manual processes.
The solution is to embrace automation and AI tools that can pick up the slack. These technologies can help streamline workflows and reduce the chance of human error by taking over routine tasks, allowing security professionals to focus on what matters most. With the sheer number of vulnerabilities out there, every minute saved is crucial.
Swapping spreadsheets for intelligent automation isn’t just a tech trend; it’s a necessity. By optimising resources with AI, organisations can finally strike a balance between staying secure and giving their people room to breathe.
Unifying siloed teams
In an ideal world, security, IT and DevOps teams would work together seamlessly. But they often sound more like a group of musicians playing from different sheets than the well-rehearsed orchestra they need to be. In the resulting discord, teams are not working together and can even actively get in each other’s way.
The communication breakdowns and duplicated efforts that come from siloed teams are frustrating at the best of times, and when it comes to vulnerability management, they’re downright risky.
Enter the Vulnerability Operations Centre, or VOC. Think of it as mission control for your VM strategy. Mirroring the effect of an SOC on security activity, the VOC brings all teams onto the same platform, centralising vulnerability data and aligning priorities across departments.
With everyone finally on the same page, security gaps close, responses get faster and teams work like an actual unit instead of siloed specialists.
Collaboration through a VOC doesn’t just cut response times; it also helps pinpoint and prioritise the most critical threats. By breaking down barriers, organisations can tighten their security posture while giving each team a clear sense of direction.
Overcoming data overload
Security teams are drowning in alerts, notifications and data from an assortment of siloed tools. In theory, these tools are supposed to simplify vulnerability management, but when they don’t talk to each other, they create a different kind of mess: data chaos. This quickly leads to alert fatigue, where critical vulnerabilities get buried under a mountain of low-priority noise.
Without a straightforward way to sift through all this information, security professionals don’t have the visibility or context to address the threats that are most critical for their organisation. To make real progress, teams need a unified, risk-based approach that lets teams focus on what truly matters.
Instead of blindly responding to every alert, a streamlined toolset can help filter out the noise, enabling organisations to free up time and sharpen their response efforts.
Preparing for self-reliance
Many organisations have relied on the NVD to steer their VM strategy. However, with the growing backlog of unanalysed vulnerabilities piling up, security teams must take ownership of their vulnerability management. Waiting on external sources to decide which threats to prioritise isn’t practical in a world where new exploits are everywhere.
By building internal processes to assess and rank vulnerabilities independently, teams can stay ahead of potential threats. With a self-reliant approach, organisations are less exposed when the usual systems hit a snag; instead, they gain the agility to respond on their own terms.
Navigating evolving compliance regulations
Effective vulnerability management is a cornerstone of meeting the requirements of regulatory compliance. This is ever more important as regulations are changing fast: just when teams get a handle on one set of rules, new ones appear, raising the stakes.
For companies trading in the EU, the recently approved Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is set to come into force over the next two years. The CRA imposes several new obligations in handling security and vulnerabilities on products with digital elements.
The NIS2 directive has also recently entered law, and companies falling under its scope must be compliant by October 2026. Meanwhile, UK companies need to keep an eye on the progress of the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill. Security teams need a proactive, centralised approach that lets them adapt quickly to these regulatory shifts.
The path to effective vulnerability management in 2025 demands more than manual processes and patchwork solutions. By embracing automation, unifying teams and tools, and proactively tackling compliance, organisations can confidently outpace threats. It’s time to streamline, prioritise and empower security teams to tackle tomorrow’s challenges head on.
Pierre Samson is chief revenue officer for cyber vulnerability management company Hackuity. He has nearly 20 years’ experience helping enterprises digitally transform and improve their cybersecurity posture.
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