This past April saw a milestone: the 100,000th common vulnerability and exposure (CVE). Although we've hit a major mark in CVE identifiers, Cisco found that the total number of high-impact vulnerabilities is actually decreasing year over year. That means there are now fewer high-impact vulnerabilities with the potential to affect a large number of users than there were three years ago.

Unfortunately, this lower number is not all good news. As we have seen over the past year, it's easier than ever for bad actors to mass-exploit disclosed vulnerabilities by assuming that a large number of companies can't or don't keep up with patching cycles. The situation is made worse by the ready availability of exploits and tools that can be used for nefarious purposes. Anyone with an Internet connection has access to tools, such as penetration testers and videos that teach people how to tailor them for malicious intent. The sheer number of people wanting information about exploits has made that information a commodity, so it's never been easier to quickly write highly effective exploits.

Take, for example, EternalBlue. Soon after Microsoft issued a patch for an issue with the Windows SMB Server, Shadow Brokers released an exploit in April 2017. A month later, the world was hit by the WannaCry ransomware, which incorporated this exploit into its attack. If that wasn't enough, in June NotPetya was released on the world, which yet again used the same exploit. As everyone saw with the economic impact of WannaCry and the NotPetya, this quick leap to a weaponized exploit turned a possible threat into a real-world attack — fast. Millions of users could have avoided damage if they had applied the patch that Microsoft issued months earlier.

Given the accelerated maturation and deployment of these threats, any organization's first line of defense must include cultivating a solid understanding of where its assets are and a fast, automated way to patch them. Yet despite the growing awareness of the cyber threats that target them, it's easy to find organizations that still aren't taking these steps and aren't practicing the fundamental security basics that would help bolster needed resilience. Proactively embracing the following practices will help:

Effectively managing risk requires hardening the overall strength and resilience of your deployed infrastructure and systems. Bad habits — such as not patching and keeping outdated solutions in place — put an organization's overall resilience into jeopardy, increasing risk. Practicing good digital hygiene, starting with and sticking to the fundamentals, will lower that risk.

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