Vulnerability management standard operating procedure (SOP)

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Manage risk | Avoid chaos | Communicate confidently

Think back to December 2021. You are looking forward to the holidays and everything seems calm.

Until all hell breaks loose with the disclosure of a massive vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) in the open source log4j library.

Angry stakeholders bombard you with urgent questions. You race to find out where you are exposed. And your team spends weeks dealing with the havoc that results.

One government agency spent an incredible 33,000 man-hours dealing with this incident.

Looking back at that mess, how well prepared were you from an organizational perspective?

I’m guessing you could have done better.

And I'll also let you onto a little secret: most enterprises did equally poorly. That's because they lacked a structured and repeatable framework.

That is why you need a detailed vulnerability management standard operating procedure (SOP).

What is a vulnerability management SOP?

It’s a key part of any security program.

Your vulnerability management policy tells you "what" to do, but a detailed SOP tells you "how" to do it, allowing you to:

• Streamline your triage and remediation procedures so that you can focus on your business operations.
• Avoid the confusion and wasted effort that accompanies emergencies and crises.
• Communicate with internal and external stakeholders efficiently and effectively instead of creating an “email avalanche” that never seems to end.

Using the free draw.io program (files from which can be imported into Microsoft Visio), I built a detailed, actionable, and customizable process flow diagram that identifies every step along the way.

Each decision has clear criteria and a specific individual is accountable for every action.

And the most important steps are linked to reference documents with detailed information explaining each concept.

Why should you buy this template?

In a word: time.

Few organizations have effective vulnerability management SOPs in place, so if you are here, it's probably fallen to you to build one.

It's not your fault that the burden is on your shoulders, but it's there. The good news is that you can rapidly accelerate your program's development with a tried and tested template like this one.

Because the hourly rate of an information security professional can range between $50-150 and this template took years to develop and refine, it will save you huge amounts of work and thus, money.

Even assuming it saves you just a single hour, it’s almost certainly worth the investment. 

And I am very confident that it can save you dozens, if not hundreds, of hours.

How do you use the template?

1. Download the SOP
2. Navigate to draw.io
3. Select where you want to store it (local device, Google Drive, etc.)
4. Click "Open Existing Diagram"
5. Locate the SOP and click "Open"
6. Start customizing and using it for your organization immediately

What if it isn't what you expected?

Since I am confident in the value of this product, I'm happy to offer a full refund (within 7 days of purchase) if you are not satisfied with it. Just send me at least 3 sentences explaining why not and let me know you've deleted the file; I'll refund you ASAP.

Why should you listen to me?

I’ve built security programs at both a publicly-traded enterprise software company and a venture-backed startup. I’m a security advisor and consultant to leading firms. And I was trained at the most elite institutions in the world, from the Marine Corps' reconnaissance platoons to Harvard Business School.

During my time in the information security trenches, I dealt with thousands of vulnerability scan results, scores of penetration test findings, dozens of security researcher reports, and a slew of major crises (like the Ripple20 disclosure and EKANS ransomware attacks).

And my results speak for themselves. This is what people have to say about me:

Check out my LinkedIn profile for these recommendations and more.

What if you're not ready to buy?

By all means hold off until you are comfortable. In the meantime:

1. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter for short-form content with detailed and actionable cybersecurity advice.
2. Sign up for my newsletter, Deploying Securely. In it, I go deep on a security or risk management topic every week.
3. Check out my free vulnerability management email course, which will give you the foundation to build an effective program.