How to Identify Critical Assets and Prioritize Their Vulnerabilities

Key Points
Need to Identfy Critical Assets: Explains why prioritizing vulnerabilities on high value systems helps reduce the greatest operational and security risk first.
What is Asset Focused Vulnerability Prioritization: Describes how Vulnerability Manager Plus enables visibility into vulnerabilities across specific endpoints so that issues on important systems can be addressed before others.
Quick Setup: Provides steps to locate vulnerabilities on selected endpoints, filter findings by risk indicators and evaluate exposure using built in assessment tools.

Introduction

Critical servers and endpoints carry more operational weight and security importance than general purpose systems. When a vulnerability is found on these assets, the impact of exploitation is significantly higher. Identifying where these systems sit within your environment and understanding their vulnerability exposure allows your team to prioritize remediation where it matters most.

What is Asset Focused Vulnerability Prioritization?

Asset focused vulnerability prioritization in Vulnerability Manager Plus is the practice of reviewing vulnerability data by endpoint so that issues on high value systems can be addressed earlier in the remediation cycle. The Product provides detailed lists of affected computers for each vulnerability, allowing teams to assess how widely a vulnerability is spread and which endpoints demand immediate action. Severity, exploit availability, patch status and vulnerability age further support prioritization efforts.

Quick Setup

Use the following steps to identify vulnerabilities present on important assets and prioritize them appropriately within the Vulnerability Manager Plus console.

Step 1: Access the Software Vulnerabilities list

1. Sign in to the Vulnerability Manager Plus console.
2. Navigate to Threats and select Software Vulnerabilities.
3. Review the full list of detected vulnerabilities and their associated details.

This provides a complete view of issues across all managed endpoints.

Step 2: Drill down to view affected critical assets

1. Select any vulnerability from the Software Vulnerabilities list.
2. Open the displayed list of affected computers to see which endpoints contain the issue.
3. Identify high value systems within this list and note their associated risk.

This step allows you to map vulnerabilities directly to the endpoints that matter most.

For additional context on this workflow, you may refer to the Vulnerability Assessment and Prioritization guide.

Step 3: Apply risk based filters to refine asset prioritization

• Return to Threats → Software Vulnerabilities.
• Open Filters to refine results based on severity, exploit status, patch availability or CVSS values.
• Combine these filters with your awareness of which endpoints are critical to generate a priority remediation list.

Filtering enables you to evaluate which vulnerabilities on high value assets pose the highest immediate risk.

Step 4: Use CVE search to validate exposures on key systems

1. In the Software Vulnerabilities section, use Search by CVE ID.
2. Enter specific CVEs known to affect important applications or infrastructure.
3. Review the resulting list and observe which critical endpoints appear in the affected computer details.

This helps ensure rapid assessment of high impact vulnerabilities tied to specific assets.

Step 5: Review vulnerability age to prioritize longstanding issues

1. Go to Dashboard → Home → Vulnerability Age Matrix.
2. Review how vulnerabilities are grouped by severity and age.
3. Identify cases in which critical assets contain older high severity vulnerabilities.

Age based insight helps highlight areas where risk has persisted and requires immediate attention.

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