How adding vulnerability management to your services could be the most lucrative decision you make this year

As a penetration testing provider, you face a lot of competition and being able to differentiate yourself or add extra value to your service offering can play a big part in attracting and keeping customers.

Your business plays an important role in helping companies to stay protected against attack but once you’ve conducted your test and handed over your findings to your client, you often have a wait of at least six months to a year before you can engage them again. Wouldn’t it be great if you had a way of giving your clients more support throughout the year?

You can. Let us explain.

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The limitation of penetration testing

While it’s correct to say that penetration testing provides much deeper insight into an organisation’s weaknesses than vulnerability scanning, it does present a point-in-time analysis of their security posture. Of course, you’d love to be able to fill in the gaps with more frequent penetration testing but the process of conducting each test, reporting the findings and then the client taking action makes that impractical, as well as costly. As a result, you have limited engagement (or none at all) until it’s time for the next pen test.

Vulnerability scanning, while it can have its limitations in depth and context, is typically run as often as daily, and in some cases even continuously. But, other than sending a report each time, scanning companies have no real relationship with their customers – it’s a scan and send job. This presents an opportunity.

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How you can fill the vulnerability management gap

Scanners produce an overwhelming amount of data for their customers and as you are likely to be aware, it’s no longer possible for security teams to get through every vulnerability. As a result, the list of issues becomes bigger and bigger, leaving the teams feeling unable to cope. Many businesses have opted for manual triage to sort through their vulnerabilities but this can take up so much time that there’s little left for remediation of the critical risks. Wouldn’t it be great if someone was able to help them turn vulnerability scanning from just a scan into an effective vulnerability management program?

We, at RankedRight, believe we have come up with a solution to the problem of paralysis brought on by the overwhelming amount of scanning data – an automated vulnerability prioritisation platform that empowers security teams to take immediate action on their most critical risks.

We eliminate the time-consuming process of manual triage, and present users with a single enlightened view of their vulnerabilities, with all the information they need to instantly make a measurable difference to their security posture.

Reams of overwhelming scan data go in, a clear plan of attack for remediation comes out, all according to the user’s own risk appetite. Its effectiveness is the reason MSSPs across the world are starting to use RankedRight to provide new and improved services to their clients.

Using vulnerability scanning and penetration testing together can give businesses continuous visibility and unparalleled insight into their biggest threats and we believe your business could be the best way of helping them make it work.

Few businesses can run penetration tests frequently enough to avoid gaps and so by acknowledging the scanning tools your customers are using alongside your service, you can present them with a way of turning that scan data into an effective vulnerability management program. With RankedRight in your arsenal, helping them take action on their most critical risks, your customers get cybersecurity help from you that they’ll never want to part with.

What you can gain from offering it to your clients

There are a number of great benefits to offering vulnerability management services to your clients. They are:

• Increased revenue: By adding another service line to your portfolio, you can seek to secure more money from your existing clients as well as attract new business.
• Stickier customers: In penetration testing, a year between engagements can feel like a long time. So long, in fact, your clients might even forget you and go elsewhere. Because vulnerability scanning is often run daily or even continuously, by providing your clients with the support they need to take control of their vulnerabilities and overall risk, you’ll gain more interaction with your customers and stay front of mind.
• Monthly recurring revenue: Secure predictable revenue growth by giving clients a monthly service with your business.
• Simple set up: Every member of your team took years to acquire the necessary knowledge and experience to run pen tests but delivering vulnerability management as a service won’t take nearly as long. Simply set up an account with RankedRight, add scan data, set rules and see an immediate benefit for your customer.
• Evidence of impact: Your work helps clients identify and resolve some major issues but breaches are still a possibility between tests if clients cannot act on the critical vulnerabilities being identified in scans. With a prioritisation tool, you can help your clients act on every critical issue affecting their company and provide evidence of the impact your service has made on their security posture.
• Joint marketing efforts: We’ll work with you to get you all the materials you need to attract customers and grow this into a successful service offering.

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How you can get started

We’ve assumed in this article that many of your clients are already using vulnerability scanners. If this is the case, then we can provide you with the necessary sales support to get them signed up to your new vulnerability management service. Contact us to get started.

For those clients of yours that don’t use scanners, get in touch with us to understand what can be done.

Prioritisation is the future of effective risk management. Help your clients take control of their risk by providing them with a powerful new service via RankedRight.

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