Revolutionizing Cybersecurity with NodeZero™ for Comprehensive Risk Assessment and Prioritization

Traditional vulnerability scanning tools have been essential for identifying systems running software with known vulnerabilities. These tools form the foundation of many Vulnerability Management (VM) programs and have long been used to conduct vulnerability assessments. However, despite their widespread use, these tools face limitations because not all vulnerabilities they flag are exploitable without specific conditions being met.

For instance, the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) Dashboard, managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), currently tracks over 253,000 entries, with new software vulnerabilities being added daily. The primary challenge lies in determining how many of these vulnerabilities have known exploits, are actively being exploited in the wild, or are even exploitable within a specific environment. Organizations continuously struggle with this uncertainty, which complicates the assessment and prioritization of vulnerabilities.

To help address this issue, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) initiated the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog in 2021. This catalog aims to help the industry track and mitigate vulnerabilities known to be widely exploited. As of now, the CISA KEV Catalog contains 1120 entries. Prior to this initiative, there was no comprehensive record of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) that were successfully exploited in the wild. This gap highlights the challenge of relying solely on vulnerability scanning tools for measuring and quantifying risk, underscoring the need for more context-aware approaches in vulnerability management.

The Challenge of Prioritizing “Exploitable” Vulnerabilities

Organizations purchase vulnerability scanning tools to identify systems running known vulnerable software. However, without effective prioritization based on exploitability, they are often left uncertain about where to focus their remediation efforts. Prioritization of exploitability is crucial for effective VM initiatives, enabling organizations to address the most critical vulnerabilities first.

For example, Art Ocain, Airiam’s CISO & Incident Response Product Management Lead, noted that many available vulnerability scanning tools were basic and time-consuming. These tools scanned client environments, then compared results with a vulnerability list, and flagged discrepancies without providing the necessary detail and nuance. This approach failed to convince clients to act quickly and did not empower them to prioritize fixing the most critical issues. The challenge of not knowing if a vulnerability is exploitable is widely acknowledged within the industry.

Jim Beers, Director of Information Security at Moravian University tends to agree. He mentions that traditional vulnerability scanners are good at identifying and describing vulnerabilities in general, but often fall short in providing actionable guidance.

“Our past vulnerability scanner told me what vulnerabilities were of high or low severity and if there is an exploit, but it didn’t tell me why…there was too much information without enough direction or actionable insights.”

Combining Vulnerability Scanning and Autonomous Pentesting

To address the challenge of prioritizing exploitability, vulnerability scanning efforts that primarily detect known vulnerabilities are now being enhanced by integrating the NodeZero autonomous penetration testing platform into VM programs. This combined approach is revolutionizing VM processes, offering significant advantages.

Calvin Engen, CTO at F12.net agrees: “The value that you get by doing this activity, and by leveraging NodeZero, is achieving far more visibility into your environment than you ever had before. And through that visibility, you can really break down the items that are most exploitable and solve for those.”

NodeZero‘s Advantages Over Traditional Scanning Tools

NodeZero surpasses the limitations of traditional scanning tools that primarily scan an environment using a list of known CVEs. Traditional scanners are proficient in detecting well-documented vulnerabilities of the services, systems, and applications in use, but they often miss the nuanced security issues that are prevalent.

NodeZero fills this gap by going beyond known and patchable vulnerabilities, such as easily compromised credentials, exposed data, misconfigurations, poor security controls, and weak policies – subtleties that can be just as detrimental as well-known vulnerabilities. Additionally, NodeZero enables organizations to look at their environment as an attacker would, illuminating their exploitable attack surface and vectors. By integrating autonomous pentesting into VM programs, organizations benefit from a more comprehensive view of their security posture, arming them with the insights needed to thwart not only the common threats but also the hidden ones that could slip under the radar of conventional VM programs.

As Jon Isaacson, Principal Consultant at JTI Cybersecurity explains, “without taking an attackers perspective by considering actual attack vectors that they can use to get in, you really can’t be ready.”

Exploitability Analysis

Understanding the difference between known vulnerabilities and exploitable vulnerabilities, measuring exploitability is key to risk reduction. NodeZero excels at validating and proving whether a vulnerability is, in fact, exploitable, and what impact its exploitation can lead to. This capability of autonomous penetration testing is crucial because it empowers security teams to strategize their remediation efforts, focusing on vulnerabilities that could be actively exploited by attackers, thus enhancing the effectiveness of VM programs overall.

Another area where traditional vulnerability scanning approaches fall short is risk prioritization. Often, detected vulnerabilities are assigned a broad risk level without considering the specific context of how the software or application is being used within the organization. NodeZero diverges from this path by evaluating the potential downstream impacts of a vulnerability being exploited by highlighting what can happen next. This context-based prioritization of risks directs attention and resources to the vulnerabilities that could lead to severe consequences for an organization’s operations and compromise the integrity of its security efforts. By doing so, NodeZero ensures that the most critical vulnerabilities are identified as a priority for remediation efforts.

NodeZero organically executes complex attack scenarios by chaining vulnerabilities and weaknesses across different hosts. This reveals how attackers could exploit multiple, seemingly insignificant vulnerabilities in conjunction to orchestrate a sophisticated attack, potentially compromising other critical systems or accessing sensitive information that may otherwise be inaccessible. This capability of chaining vulnerabilities across hosts is indispensable for understanding the available attack paths attackers could capitalize on. Through this approach, organizations gain insight into how an attacker will navigate through their network, piecing together a path of least resistance and escalating privileges to reach critical assets.

Upon completing a NodeZero penetration test, the NodeZero API allows for the extraction and integration of test results into existing VM workflows. This means that organizations can automatically import detailed exploitation results into their vulnerability management reporting systems. The seamless integration of NodeZero with VM processes enables organizations to accurately classify and prioritize security weaknesses based on real-world exploitability and potential impacts. By focusing on remediating the most exploitable security weaknesses, organizations are not just patching vulnerabilities; they are strategically enhancing their defenses against the threats that matter most.

Conclusion

The integration of autonomous penetration testing into Vulnerability Management (VM) programs marks a significant revolution in the field of cybersecurity. While traditional vulnerability scanning tools are indispensable for identifying systems potentially running known vulnerable software, they fall short in prioritizing vulnerabilities based on exploitability. This gap leaves organizations uncertain about where to focus their remediation efforts, a challenge that has become more pronounced with the increasing complexity and prevalence of nuanced security issues.

NodeZero addresses these limitations by combining the strengths of traditional scanning with the advanced capabilities of autonomous penetration testing. This integration enhances VM programs by providing a more comprehensive view of an organization’s security posture. NodeZero excels in exploitability analysis, risk prioritization, and cross-host vulnerability chaining, offering insights into both common and hidden threats. Furthermore, the seamless integration of NodeZero within existing VM workflows through its API allows for accurate classification and prioritization of security weaknesses based on real-world exploitability and potential impacts.

By focusing remediation efforts on the most critical vulnerabilities while looking at their attack surface through the eyes of an attacker, organizations can strategically enhance their defenses against the threats that matter most, in less time, and with more return on effort. This combined approach not only improves the effectiveness of VM programs but also empowers security teams to proactively manage and mitigate risks in a dynamic threat landscape. The revolution of integrating autonomous penetration testing into VM programs is a transformative step towards more robust and resilient cybersecurity practices.

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