by Josef Weiss
February 20, 2025
Patch management is a key responsibility of any information security team. By applying patches regularly, security teams can reduce the level of risk that their organization is exposed to. Integrating Nessus with Tenable Vulnerability Management allows analysts to monitor the application of patches and resolution of vulnerabilities in their network.
The Historic Patch Mitigation Status report monitors vulnerability mitigation on an organization’s network in order to help security teams understand the effectiveness of their patch management efforts. Increased visibility into vulnerability mitigation can assist security teams in implementing improved patch application procedures as needed. By monitoring the patterns of patch application and vulnerability mitigation, security teams can better understand the effectiveness of their efforts and make adjustments as necessary in order to more effectively secure their network.
The widgets in this report display data about the mitigation dates of detected vulnerabilities. Two filters are leveraged: “Time Taken To Fix” and “Last Fixed.” The widgets depicting patch rates use the “Time Taken To Fix” filter to count vulnerabilities that were fixed within the specified number of days of initial discovery. The widgets that depict patch dates use the “Last Fixed” filter to count vulnerabilities that were mitigated within the specified timeframe.
The Report is laid out into three individual chapters. The first chapter acts as an executive summary and displays the widgets on the Historic Patch Mitigation Status Dashboard. The proceeding two chapters break down two widgets based on their time frames and provide asset summary lists along with iterators to detail the vulnerabilities that were fixed.The elements in this report can assist security teams with understanding the effectiveness of their patch application and vulnerability remediation efforts.
Chapters:
- Executive Summary - The Executive Summary chapter The acts as an executive summary and displays the widgets on the Historic Patch Mitigation Status Dashboard.
- Patch Rate Summary - The Patch Rate Summary chapter provides a summary of the assets that have had vulnerabilities patched within several time frames
- Patch Date Summary - The Patch Date Summary chapter provides a summary of the assets that have had vulnerabilities patched within several time frames.