Conduct vulnerability assessments, prioritize vulnerabilities, and recommend effective mitigation strategies for vulnerability management.
Covers implementing vulnerability scanning including asset discovery, internal vs. external scanning, agent vs. agentless approaches, credentialed vs. non-credentialed scans, passive vs. active scanning, static vs. dynamic analysis, and critical infrastructure scanning. Includes analyzing assessment tool output from network scanners, web application scanners, vulnerability scanners, debuggers, and cloud infrastructure assessments. Also covers vulnerability prioritization using CVSS, validation, exploitability assessment, and recommending mitigation controls.
5 minutes
5 Questions
In the context of the CompTIA CySA+ certification, Vulnerability Management is the cyclical practice of identifying, classifying, prioritizing, remediating, and mitigating software and infrastructure vulnerabilities. It moves beyond simple scanning to establish a comprehensive governance structure designed to manage an organization's specific risk exposure.
The process typically follows a four-phase lifecycle:
1. **Identification:** This involves maintaining an accurate asset inventory and utilizing automated tools (such as Tenable Nessus or Qualys) to detect known flaws. A CySA+ analyst must understand when to use credentialed (authenticated) scans for deep configuration audits versus non-credentialed scans for external attack surface assessments.
2. **Analysis and Prioritization:** A raw scan report is rarely actionable immediately. Analysts must triage findings to reduce false positives and prioritize remediation based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), active threat intelligence, and the criticality of the asset. A critical vulnerability on an isolated test server generally takes a lower priority than a high vulnerability on a public-facing web server.
3. **Treatment:** Vulnerabilities are handled through Remediation (patching or configuration fixes), Mitigation (applying compensating controls like WAFs or segmentation when patching is initially impossible), or Risk Acceptance (formally acknowledging the risk due to business constraints). Analysts must often navigate inhibitors like legacy systems or strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs).
4. **Verification:** The cycle concludes with rescanning to verify that patches were successfully applied and did not introduce new issues, followed by reporting metrics to stakeholders.
For the CySA+ candidate, success in this domain requires the ability to contextualize technical findings into business risk, ensuring that security efforts align with organizational goals and compliance requirements.In the context of the CompTIA CySA+ certification, Vulnerability Management is the cyclical practice of identifying, classifying, prioritizing, remediating, and mitigating software and infrastructure vulnerabilities. It moves beyond simple scanning to establish a comprehensive governance structure …