How do you handle dynamic and ephemeral assets in your vulnerability assessment?

Effective management of dynamic and ephemeral assets in vulnerability assessments: >Real-time asset tracking to identify new assets. >Avail on-demand or scheduled vulnerability scanning tools to scan for assets as they get active. >Integration of the CI/CD pipeline to enable automatic scanning in the pipelines. >Ensure visibility into ephemeral assets with tools designed to handle dynamic environments. >Have a strong discovery mechanisms in place for new and temporary assets. >Scanning policies where certain events should perform a scan for given conditions. >Engagement with the DevOps team by including security at each stage of deploying. >Review processes for regular VAs and update strategic approach based on input and learning.

You can start your scope by having the critical services /systems being scanned first. Get a sense of how bad things look and initiate remediation work on those Critical and High vulnerabilities. Start expanding scope to less critical systems/services having those remediation discussions in parallel. Then, expand to non-critical services/systems. Do the same and you also know this is the 3rd level of priority.

For vulnerability scanning of ephemeral assets, handling those assets within a vulnerability management program depends on the context. If you are talking about virtual machines, often the vulnerability tool can be installed on the base image the ephemeral systems are created from. Periodic scans of the whole environment are also recommended to catch unknown systems. If it is an application instance, there are tools to monitor and/or protect the pipeline so no machine is unmonitored. External DAST scans of the environment may be warranted as well. If you are talking about systems on a guest wireless network (that does not connect to internal resources), you can probably ignore it except with some contexts.

Think of fixing vulnerabilities like tidying up your home. You spot the mess (that's your vulnerability), then you clean it up (that's patching or updating). Sometimes you might rearrange furniture to make the room work better (that's like tweaking your settings). You could use cool gadgets to make cleaning easier and faster (that's your automation tools). And just like you'd do a quick once-over to make sure you didn't miss a spot, you'll want to double-check your digital space too. It's all about keeping your tech home comfy, safe, and running smoothly!

To effectively manage dynamic and ephemeral assets in vulnerability assessment, use continuous scanning tools, asset tagging, integration with asset management systems, prioritizing vulnerabilities based on severity and impact, automating remediation processes, adapting to cloud and DevOps environments, and conducting regular reviews and updates. These strategies ensure comprehensive coverage, maintain visibility, and ensure no asset is left unmonitored. Regular reviews and updates can also accommodate changes in asset management practices or technological advancements.

Micro-segmentation divides the network into smaller, isolated segments, reducing the attack surface and improving security for dynamic assets. I implemented micro-segmentation using VMware NSX to enhance security for our dynamic cloud environment. By creating granular security policies for individual workloads, we limited lateral movement and contained potential breaches. For instance, ephemeral development instances were isolated from production environments, ensuring that any compromise in the development environment did not impact production systems. This approach provided robust security controls for our dynamic and ephemeral assets.