Tenable Vulnerability Management Accelerates Security Response with Context-Driven Prioritization

Vulnerability management has long been a cornerstone of effective cybersecurity. As modern threats grow more complex and regulations continuously evolve, security solutions must also advance. In an exclusive interview with CRNtv Host Sydney Neely, Gavin Millard, deputy CTO and VP of product at Tenable, shares how Tenable is leading the way in vulnerability management with their innovative technology. Q: Vulnerability management has been crucial for effective cybersecurity for years. How has it evolved recently to address new challenges and threats? The attack surface that we're protecting has changed dramatically over the last few years. It's increased in scale and also complexity and different asset types, they're involved nowadays. So vulnerability management has had to adapt to that to be able to scale at the same rate and also detect new asset types and ingest data, and to be able to gain visibility across every attack surface. We're also seeing a huge increase in vulnerabilities being disclosed. Being able to prioritize those vulnerabilities is incredibly critical, like having 22,000 vulnerabilities being disclosed and having to fix all of them is not acceptable, especially when you're dealing with a very large attack surface. And then also, the time to exploit these vulnerabilities has also dramatically decreased. So rather than taking days or weeks to be able to leverage a new disclosed vulnerability, it can sometimes take even just hours. So being able to very quickly identify where you're exposed to these critical vulnerabilities and then be able to prioritize which things to fix first, is now crucial to a good vulnerability management program. Q: How is Tenable driving innovation and enhancing its product offerings to stay ahead in the cybersecurity landscape? Tenable has been pioneering the approach of exposure management, and that's taking vulnerabilities and contextualizing it with lots of other information. So threat information, to be able to predict the likelihood a vulnerability is going to be leveraged. Things like identity as well, you know who is associated with the asset and is that asset important, the ability to be able to predict the criticality of an asset. And all of this is powered by our machine learning and AI that we've invested very heavily in in the last few years and our data lake that powers a lot of the platform. When it comes to threats, what we're also doing now is surfacing all the threat information that we gather on every single vulnerability. So empowering our users to be able to make the decisions on the right vulnerabilities to address dramatically reducing the vulnerabilities that they need to deal with. So as an example in vulnerability intelligence, I'll be able to see a timeline of every single vulnerability, when it was disclosed, proof of concept was made available for it, whether it's being leveraged by attackers, whether it's using ransomware or any other attack technique. And that piece of information is critical in deciding which vulnerabilities need to be addressed. Q: What makes Tenable an ideal partner for MSSPs and channel partners in delivering comprehensive vulnerability management solutions to their customers? When the next big bug hits the first thing a customer is going to do is ask their trusted partner, is this important and where are we exposed. And we're the company that helps answer both of those questions. We have an MSSP offering that partners can leverage to be able to help their customers understand which assets are affected by these vulnerabilities, be able to describe the criticality of that vulnerability using vulnerability intelligence, and also be able to help their customers focus on the assets that matter. We're also 100% channel focused. We've got coverage across the globe working very closely with our customers both on selling through to their clients, but also offering these MSSP services. If you would like to learn more about Tenable and how they can help you stay ahead of cybersecurity threats, Tenable.com.