best vulnerability management tools

2024 is shaping up to be a challenging year for vulnerability management. The increasing sophistication of threats, paired with the recent surge in cyber attacks, means that keeping IT infrastructure secure has never been more complex for security teams. 

And with the average cost of a cyber attack reaching a record $9.46 million for US businesses in 2023, businesses need a cyber defence system that proactively identifies vulnerabilities in their systems and keeps them out of the hands of malicious actors. 

That’s where vulnerability management tools can help.

What are vulnerability management tools? 

Vulnerability management tools are software applications that help organizations identify, assess, and remediate vulnerabilities in their IT systems and networks. 

They work by scanning systems for known vulnerabilities and then providing information about the severity of the vulnerability, the potential impact it could have on the organization, and steps that can be taken to remediate it.

Identifying and addressing these vulnerabilities before they are exploited by attackers is vital. By securing them before it's too late, vulnerability management tools shrink the number of entry points attackers can use to compromise your systems, making it significantly harder for them to launch successful attacks.

Why are vulnerability management tools important? 

Vulnerability management tools continuously scan your systems, uncovering vulnerabilities like outdated software, misconfigurations, or buggy applications that malicious actors could use to gain access to your data. 

Not all of these vulnerabilities are created equal, so these tools are crucial to helping you focus on the most critical ones based on their severity, exploitability, and potential impact on your systems and data, ensuring you're patching the most urgent issues first and maximizing your security efforts.

Read: Top 10 Biggest Cyber Attacks in History

Many industries and regulations also mandate vulnerability management as a key security control that all organizations must implement. Proactive vulnerability management can prevent costly data breaches, downtime, and reputational damage, leading to significant long-term financial savings and an overall better security posture across your organization. 

Vulnerability management is also crucial to helping organizations demonstrate compliance, as they often provide detailed reports on identified vulnerabilities, remediation actions taken, and overall security posture.

Features of vulnerability management tools

features of vulnerability management tools

Vulnerability management tools offer a range of features to help organizations identify security vulnerabilities before they’re exploited and maintain a secure IT environment across the organization. 

Here's a deeper dive into some of their key features:

1. Asset Discovery and Inventory

  • Vulnerability management tools comprehensively scan your network to discover all connected devices, applications, and operating systems, creating a detailed inventory.
  • They categorize assets based on criticality, function, and security level, aiding in prioritizing risk management.
  • Tools monitor asset changes, alerting you to new devices or software installations that might introduce vulnerabilities.

2. Vulnerability Scanning and Assessment

  • These tools leverage vast databases of known vulnerabilities, including Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), to scan your assets.
  • Scans go beyond basic checks too. Many vulnerability management tools probe for misconfigurations, weak passwords, and other security weaknesses.
  • Tools also assign severity scores to vulnerabilities based on exploitability, impact, and potential damage, while advanced tools use techniques like machine learning to minimize false positives so you can focus your attention on real threats.

3. Prioritization and Remediation

  • Many vulnerability management tools prioritize vulnerabilities based on severity, exploitability, and potential impact, guiding your remediation efforts.
  • They also often integrate with patch management systems to automate patching processes and ensure timely vulnerability closure, and offer detailed information on remediation steps, including available patches, workarounds, and mitigation strategies.
  • Many tools automatically generate comprehensive reports on vulnerabilities, remediation progress, and overall security posture.

4. Additional Features

  • Some vulnerability management tools integrate threat intelligence feeds to alert you of emerging vulnerabilities and targeted attacks before they happen. 
  • They're also great for compliance management, as many comply with security regulations by providing reports and documentation on vulnerability management processes
  • Many tools integrate with firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and other security solutions to provide a holistic view of your security posture.

Choosing a Vulnerability management solution

Choosing the best vulnerability management tool for your business is crucial for strengthening your organization's security posture and keeping your data out of the hands of threat actors. 

Here are some key considerations before making your decision:

1. Your IT environment

  • Consider the number and types of devices, applications, and operating systems you manage. Complex environments require tools with comprehensive scanning capabilities and robust asset management.
  • If you use cloud-based infrastructure, choose a tool with cloud-specific features and integrations.

2. Security needs and priorities:

  • Ensure the vulnerability management tool  tool aligns with relevant industry regulations or internal compliance policies.
  •  If you face targeted attacks or industry-specific threats, you'll need to choose a tool with features tailored to those risks.
  • Consider how the tool integrates with your existing security ecosystem (firewalls, SIEM, etc.) for streamlined workflows.

3. Budget and resources:

  • Evaluate the tool's pricing model (subscription, perpetual) and consider any additional costs for deployment, training, or maintenance.
  • You'll also need to asess your team's technical skills and available resources to manage and utilize the tool effectively.

4. Features and functionalities

  • Before choosing a vulnerability tool, it's important to evaluate the tool's scanning capabilities, including internal, external, and web application scanning. Look for tools that offer accurate severity scoring and risk-based prioritization algorithms rather than just scanning too. 
  • When it comes to remediation, choose a tool with clear remediation steps, patch management integration, and automation options where feasible.
  • Consider features like threat intelligence feeds, compliance management tools, and customization options based on your needs.

Best Vulnerability Management tools and software

We’ve compiled ten of the best vulnerability management tools for 2024 to help you choose the right software solution to keep your business secure. 

Tripwire

Tripwire is a well-established name in the cybersecurity realm that’s known for its industry-leading solution Tripwire IP360 vulnerability management tool. While not the only contender in the market, it boasts certain features and approaches that make it a strong choice for many organizations, including both agentless scanning for non-intrusive assessments and agent-based scanning for deeper insights into specific assets. It also leverages extensive databases of vulnerabilities and employs advanced techniques to identify and prioritize them based on severity, exploitability, and potential impact. Using a unique VERT risk scoring system provides granular risk analysis, helping you focus on the most critical issues first.

One of the biggest benefits of Tripwire aside from its flexible and scalable design is its integrated VM, which makes it easy to add VM solutions as often as you like to your ecosystem. There’s also access to actionable reporting solutions and various other accompanying tools within the Tripwire ecosystem, including industrial visibility services and reports that give detailed remediation steps to keep IT systems secure.

Holm Security 

Holm Security takes a ‘next-gen’ approach to vulnerability management by pairing real-time threat intelligence and continuous monitoring with automation to proactively identify, assess, and remediate vulnerabilities across a company's IT infrastructure. Unlike traditional vulnerability scanners that run periodic assessments to identify security flaws, the platform continuously monitors your attack surface for emerging threats and vulnerabilities to identify and address vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them. The platform also integrates with various threat intelligence feeds, providing insights into the latest attack methods and targeted vulnerabilities to help you prioritize remediation efforts based on the most relevant threats. 

Along with threat intelligence, Holm employs advanced scanning techniques beyond basic vulnerability databases to identify misconfigurations, zero-day vulnerabilities, and other potential security weaknesses across your IT infrastructure. Its next-generation scanning techniques can also unearth deeper security weaknesses compared to traditional vulnerability scanners, allowing you to prevent attacks before they happen and potentially minimize damage and downtime. Holm's platform is designed to be user-friendly too, and it offers cloud-based and on-premises deployment options to cater for organizations of all sizes.

Trava Security 

While it's not as widely known as some of the other industry giants on this list, Trava Security’s powerful vulnerability management solution stands out for empowering businesses of all sizes with the tools to proactively manage their security posture. The platform uses a combination of agent-based and agentless scanning, covering a wide range of assets, including devices, applications, and cloud environments to help keep your critical assets secure. It also leverages extensive vulnerability databases and proprietary risk scoring to identify and prioritize vulnerabilities based on severity, exploitability, and potential impact.

Trava goes beyond basic vulnerability management by offering cyber risk quantification tools that translates vulnerabilities into real-world financial impact so you can prioritize risks based on potential financial losses. The tool also helps you comply with various industry regulations and standards by generating detailed reports on every vulnerability, remediation progress, and overall security posture. You are informed about emerging threats and targeted vulnerabilities relevant to your industry and attack surface.

Vulcan Cyber

Vulcan Cyber’s vulnerability management platform is designed to automate tasks and streamline vulnerability detection, prioritization, and remediation for organizations of all sizes. Unlike traditional vulnerability scanners, Vulcan continuously scans and monitors assets for emerging threats and vulnerabilities, allowing you to detect threats in real time and prevent them from infiltrating your cyber defences. The platform continuously monitors your environment for emerging threats and vulnerabilities and automates patch deployment and configuration changes where possible to streamline remediation workflows. It then uses machine learning and proprietary prioritization algorithms to rank vulnerabilities based on their potential impact on your specific business processes and critical assets

By automating tasks and workflows, Vulcan Cyber can potentially save your security team significant time and effort, focusing on strategic activities. The platform automates various remediation tasks, including patch deployment, configuration changes, and isolation procedures, to significantly reduce manual intervention while reducing the risk of false positives and reducing the time wasted on investigating non-existent threats. It also automatically generates comprehensive reports and dashboards that provide real-time insights into vulnerabilities, remediation progress, and your overall security posture, giving you constant visibility and insights into how to keep your IT infrastructure secure.

Vicarius

Vicarius helps security and IT teams protect their most critical apps and assets against software exploitation through vRx, a consolidated end-to-end vulnerability remediation platform. vRx goes beyond basic asset discovery to identify not just devices and applications, but also proprietary and niche software running in your environment, providing a complete picture of your attack surface. It’s also known for its "patchless protection,” using in-memory techniques to create a virtual shield around unpatched applications and mitigate exploitation attempts even without immediate patching. It does this while providing detailed remediation steps and integrates with patch management systems to streamline vulnerability closure and expedite remediation whenever possible.

Vicarius employs both traditional vulnerability scanning and proprietary binary-level threat analysis to detect known vulnerabilities, zero-day exploits, and even vulnerabilities in custom-developed software. It does this while applying binary-level analysis on your IT infrastructure, going beyond traditional scanning, and potentially uncovering hidden vulnerabilities even in custom-developed applications. vRx's cloud deployment also removes the need for on-premises infrastructure, simplifying setup and vulnerability management at a competitive pricing compared to other solutions.

Intruder

Intruder is a powerful, cloud-based vulnerability management tool that proactively scans for security threats through a unique threat interpretation system that makes vulnerability management a breeze. The software keeps tabs on your attack surface 24/7, showing where and how your company may be vulnerable, then prioritizing issues and filtering noise so you can fix the problems that matter most. It gives you a real view of your attack surface combining continuous network monitoring and automated vulnerability scanning with proactive threat response in a single, unified. platform. 

With actionable results prioritized by context, Intruder helps you focus on fixing what matters, bringing easy effectiveness to vulnerability management. It gives you noise-filtered, concise and actionable results, providing audit-ready reports that easily show your security posture to auditors, stakeholders and customers. 

Acunetix

Acunetix has established itself as a comprehensive and powerful vulnerability management solution that organizations of all sizes can trust. Developed by Invictci, the software identifies vulnerabilities, strengthens companies’ security posture, and protects their valuable digital assets. Its powerful and accurate web vulnerability scanning engine employs cutting-edge scanning technologies to thoroughly analyze web applications, including dynamic, single-page, and JavaScript-heavy websites. Acunetix scans for a wide range of vulnerabilities including all OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection, and cross-site scripting (XSS). 

Acunetix also offers flexibility in terms of deployment options. It can be deployed as an on-premises solution or accessed via the cloud, allowing organizations to choose the option that best fits their infrastructure and security requirements. Furthermore, Acunetix seamlessly integrates with popular development tools and issue-tracking systems, streamlining the vulnerability management process and enabling collaboration between security teams and developers.

Qualys VMDR

Among the best-known companies in the vulnerability management space, Qualys offers a powerful suite of solutions for assessing and responding to vulnerabilities in your IT infrastructure. The company’s specialized vulnerability management tool – Qualys VMDR – boasts a powerful scanning engine that discovers a vast range of assets, including devices, applications, and operating systems, building a detailed inventory for effective risk management. It also leverages extensive databases of known vulnerabilities (CVEs) and employs advanced techniques to scan both internal and external environments, including web applications. This allows it to not only identify vulnerabilities but also prioritizes them based on severity, exploitability, and potential impact – guiding your remediation efforts.

Qualys goes beyond just listing vulnerabilities. The software offers actionable insights and integrates with patch management systems to streamline the remediation process, providing detailed guidance on mitigation strategies and workarounds when patches are unavailable. You can also generate comprehensive reports on identified vulnerabilities, remediation progress, and overall security posture. Qualys VMDR offers various advanced features like threat intelligence feeds, cloud security assessments, and out-of-band configuration assessments too, providing real-time vulnerability detection and updates to help you stay ahead of emerging threats.

Tenable Nessus

Tenable Nessus has established itself as a major player in the vulnerability management space, offering a suite of mitigation tools to help prevent threats before they happen. The platform boasts a powerful scanning engine that discovers a vast range of assets, including devices, applications, and operating systems, leveraging an extensive database of known vulnerabilities (CVEs) and employing advanced techniques to scan both internal and external environments, including web applications. The tool not only identifies vulnerabilities but also prioritizes them based on severity, exploitability, and potential impact to guide your remediation efforts – all while offering actionable insights and integrating seamlessly with patch management systems to streamline the remediation process. 

Managed completely in the cloud, Tenable is one of the most comprehensive end-to-end vulnerability management tools available today. This software offers a range of advanced features like threat intelligence integration, web application scanning, and container security assessments to help keep your IT infrastructure secure. It also can also generate comprehensive reports on identified vulnerabilities, remediation progress, and overall security posture. These reports are not only crucial for compliance purposes but also provide valuable insights to help you identify threats before they happen. 

Rapid7 InsightVM

Rapid7’s InsightVM is a powerful vulnerability management tool built to manage vulnerabilities, monitor for malicious behavior, investigate and shut down attacks, and automate your security operations. InsightVM boasts a robust scanning engine that discovers and inventories a wide range of assets, including devices, applications, operating systems, and cloud infrastructure. This comprehensive view enables effective risk management across your entire IT environment. The platform also employs risk-based prioritization algorithms to provide an Active Risk Score based on the latest CVSS and is enriched with multiple threat intelligence feeds, including proprietary Rapid7 research from Project Lorelei and AttackerKB to provide security teams with a threat-aware vulnerability risk score. This score considers context-specific factors like exploitability, asset criticality, and threat intelligence, ensuring you focus on the most critical vulnerabilities first.

InsightVM provides IT-integrated remediation Projects that allow security teams to automatically work within their existing IT workflows, plan and monitor remediation progress live, and directly integrate with leading IT ticketing. And with Live Dashboards, you can easily create custom and full dashboards for every stakeholder and query each card with simple language to track the progress of your security program. InsightVM also lets you query assets, vulnerabilities, and solutions using an intuitive UI. This means you can slice and dice data without relying solely on complex query languages – opening up the tool to everyone in your organization regardless of their technical expertise.