Secunia launches Secunia Vulnerability Intelligence Manager 4.0

Secunia, the leading provider of IT security solutions that enables businesses and private individuals to manage and control vulnerability threats, today announced the general availability of the new version of Secunia's Vulnerability Intelligence Manager, the VIM 4.0.

The Secunia VIM 4.0 is the latest evolutionary step in the technology Secunia has developed to help organizations handle vulnerabilities and protect business critical information and assets against potential attacks. Because it covers more than 40,000 software systems and applications, the VIM 4.0 solution provides the most comprehensive intelligence about software vulnerabilities available to organizations, ensuring that all security threats can be dealt with before the IT infrastructure is compromised by cybercriminals .

" We're very happy with this new version of the VIM. The acclaimed quality of the intelligence delivered by Secunia's Research Team is the backbone of the solution, and that intelligence becomes pure power in the hands of the security teams in the organizations; it provides them with the relevant intelligence so they can target their efforts and deal with the vulnerabilities that are critical to their business, instead of the teams spending their time frantically trying to figure out which issues to address in what order. That's the assurance and focus the VIM provides: because of the accuracy of the intelligence, the real-time delivery and the reports, filters and settings, security departments are able to distribute the intelligence to the appropriate stakeholders within the organisation and to set up effective security processes," said Morten R. Stengaard, Director of Product Management and Quality Assurance at Secunia.

Since Secunia started 10 years ago, the in-house Research Team has delivered real-time intelligence customized to the needs of the individual company. The solution enables organizations to provide external auditors with exhaustive information on how compliance policies are met.

"This is particularly important to corporations and organizations in the US, who have to meet exacting standards to keep their IT infrastructure secure, and who risk heavy fines if they do not meet the compliancy requirements that apply to their particular industry," explained Morten R. Stengaard.

"The Secunia VIM delivers a comprehensive solution to automate the process of compliance with guidelines such as these: With the vulnerability intelligence manager, organisations can easily formalize and automate the tasks that are typically weak links in compliance: assessment, remediation, approval workflow, exception management, and consolidated reporting. The Secunia VIM helps organisations tackle those difficult problems, while also easing the task of defining and managing policies, mapping policies to controls, and collecting/archiving evidence of compliance," said Morten R. Stengaard.

As cybercrime against corporations, organizations and government institutions is slowly becoming a recognized security threat, the importance of managing software vulnerabilities is an aspect of security that is gradually receiving attention in organizations around the world.

If there are flaws in the software, cybercriminals have access to the entire infrastructure of any organization. And modern organizations use a lot of different software programs: it is a common misconception to think that only the organization-wide systems purchased, implemented and maintained by company IT departments pose a risk. Literally any software flaw in any program or app used in any endpoint related to the organization represents a security risk – including company laptops used both professionally and privately by employees.

Effectively, any program downloaded to an employee laptop is a threat to the organization's security. Consequently, it is not enough to manage the software systems that make up the organisation's official software infrastructure.

"And it is not enough to wait for official software patches from Microsoft" warns Morten R. Stengaard: "As only 22% of vulnerabilities affect Microsoft programs and operating systems, it is critical to have the correct vulnerability intelligence to spot the vulnerabilities in the remaining 78% - the third-party programs. And the threat to third-party programs is on the increase: the share of vulnerabilities in these has risen from 45% to 78% from 2006 to 2011."

Recent research from information technology research company Gartner, emphasizes the risk software vulnerabilities pose:

Through 2015, 80% of successful attacks will exploit well-known vulnerabilities and be detectable via security monitoring. […] Applications are the gateways to the data that is the focus of a targeted attack. Dynamic application security testing (DAST) tools can be used to scan productions applications to find vulnerabilities. When a vulnerability is present on a running application, production data is at risk, and remediation cycle times are long typically taking multiple months.

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