Why this policy proves your security is alive
Finding vulnerabilities is easy; fixing them on a schedule is what auditors check. A vulnerability management policy defines how you discover weaknesses, decide what to fix first, and remediate within set timeframes — turning a scanner report into an operating discipline.
What to include
- Scope — systems, applications, endpoints and cloud in scope.
- Discovery — scanning frequency, authenticated scans, and intake of vendor advisories and CVEs.
- Prioritisation — severity scoring (e.g. CVSS) combined with exposure and asset criticality.
- Remediation SLAs — fix deadlines by severity (e.g. critical in days, high in weeks), the heart of the policy.
- Patch management — testing, scheduling and emergency patching.
- Exceptions — risk-accepted findings, time-boxed and approved.
- Reporting — metrics and trends for management.
Common mistakes
- Scanning without remediation SLAs, so findings pile up.
- One generic deadline for all severities.
- No exception process, so overdue items get quietly ignored instead of risk-accepted.
Framework alignment
Maps to ISO 27001:2022 Annex A 8.8 (management of technical vulnerabilities), the SOC 2 criteria, and NIST CSF Detect/Protect.
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