Articles about Patching

While many organizations have solutions in place to identify patchable CVEs, non-patchable security issues such as misconfigurations continue to provide threat actors with consistent access points to exploit organizations.

We spoke to Jason Mar-Tang, field CISO at Pentera, to discuss the challenge of non-patchable security issues vs. CVEs, what makes them so much more difficult to identify, the challenges of remediation, and what standards organizations should implement to tackle this challenge.

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More than ever enterprises are turning to Linux solutions. But while the open source OS has a good reputation for security that doesn't mean that it’s invulnerable and it's important to stay on top of updates and patching.

Seal Security is launching Seal OS, a holistic solution designed to automatically fix vulnerabilities in both Linux operating systems and application code.

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Modern enterprises are under fire from all angles. Attackers have become increasingly sophisticated and persistent in how they target enterprise data and systems. But as the threat landscape has evolved and become more complex, one tried and true method for malicious attackers stands out as a weak point for nearly every enterprise attack surface: outdated software. As much as patch management has advanced in recent years, the fact remains that most organizations struggle to deploy patches consistently and effectively, and that leaves systems exposed to cyber attacks.  

Cybercriminals have become quite adept at exploiting unpatched software, using it as an easy entry point into enterprise networks. Malicious actors have developed an incredibly sophisticated understanding of where enterprise weak points are. In fact, most criminal operators have a deeper understanding of enterprise attack surfaces than the security teams tasked with defending them. Enterprise networks often consist of hundreds of thousands of IT assets, and every single unpatched instance represents an opportunity for attackers to compromise data and operations.

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Patching is something that we all know we have to do. But it is easier said than done. In reality, patching can be hard due to problems around application compatibility, having adequate downtime windows, or more pressing business risks to manage. This can lead to some very serious software problems being left open and vulnerable to exploitation.

Here are three examples of common software vulnerabilities that existed for years with updates available, yet are still regularly targeted by threat actors.

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As we approach the 20th anniversary of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, it's crucial to reflect on the progress made in patch management, a fundamental cybersecurity practice aimed at helping organizations mitigate the risk of unpatched vulnerabilities -- the primary gateway for attackers to breach organizational systems and deploy ransomware and other malware.

In 2003, patch management awareness was low, but it wasn't as critical to global cybersecurity as today because cybercrime was less developed. Automated exploits for known vulnerabilities and ransomware, which now monetizes attacks, hadn't emerged yet.

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Remediating security issues and potential software vulnerabilities is one of the fastest ways to improve security and prevent attacks. It’s a standard process for security teams, and it should make the job easier for everyone involved. Yet many of the security issues that we see exploited remain known software vulnerabilities -- in Qualys' Top 20 Security Vulnerability Research this year, the top five most common exploits include a privilege escalation issue in the Zerologon protocol, remote code execution (RCE) problems in Microsoft Office and Wordpad from 2017 and even an RCE with Microsoft Windows Common Controls from 2012. These issues still exist, and have been targeted by threat actors this year.

So why are these old problems still present in production systems years after patches have been released, and why have they not been fixed? What is holding IT teams back around this backlog of vulnerabilities, and how can teams improve their processes to get ahead of these problems in future?

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