Practice guide
Vulnerability management
Vulnerability management is the continuous process of finding, prioritising and fixing security weaknesses before attackers exploit them. A mature vulnerability management system is now a baseline expectation under NIS2 and DORA.
The basics
What is vulnerability management?
Prioritise, do not just enumerate
The value of a vulnerability management system is prioritisation. Thousands of findings mean nothing without a way to rank them by real risk and drive them to closure.A continuous cycle
Vulnerability management runs a loop: discover assets, scan for weaknesses, prioritise by risk, remediate and verify.
More than scanning
A vulnerability management system adds context — asset value, exploitability and business impact — so you fix what matters first.
A regulatory baseline
NIS2 lists vulnerability handling among its risk-management measures, and ISO 27001 expects a managed process.
The vulnerability management lifecycle
Discover
Maintain an accurate inventory of assets to scan.
Assess
Scan and identify vulnerabilities across the estate.
Prioritise
Rank by exploitability and business impact.
Remediate
Patch, mitigate and verify the fix.
Where to next
Tool and connect
Vulnerability tooling
Compare open-source scanners and management platforms.
Critical infrastructure
Fewer exposures, fewer reportable incidents.
Vulnerability management FAQs
What is vulnerability management?
The ongoing process of identifying, prioritising and remediating security vulnerabilities across your systems.
What is a vulnerability management system?
Tooling that discovers assets, scans for weaknesses, prioritises findings by risk and tracks remediation to closure.
Is it required by NIS2?
NIS2 lists vulnerability handling and disclosure among the baseline risk-management measures for in-scope entities.
Build a vulnerability management system that scales.
Compare the open-source scanners and platforms that fit your team.