Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

In an era where our daily lives are intricately intertwined with the digital realm, safeguarding sensitive data and critical systems has never been more crucial. Enter Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management—a cybersecurity solution that’s not just smart but also surprisingly user-friendly. Developed by the tech giant Microsoft Corporation, it’s like your organization’s digital guardian, protecting you from the ever-shifting landscape of cyber threats.

Picture this: a world where everything from your personal information to your business’s sensitive data is just a click away from potential hackers and digital mischief-makers. In such a world, robust cybersecurity isn’t just a choice; it’s a necessity, and that’s precisely where Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management takes center stage. This powerful tool is more than just lines of code and algorithms. It’s like the...

Getting started with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

In the ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity, organizations need reliable tools to help them identify and address vulnerabilities in their systems and networks. Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management (MDVM) is a comprehensive solution designed to do just that. One of its key features is the Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management dashboard, a central hub for tracking and mitigating vulnerabilities. In this article, we will explore the MDVM dashboard and discuss its capabilities, benefits, and how it can enhance an organization’s security posture.

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management licensing and technical requirements

MDVM is a component of the broader Microsoft Defender for Endpoint security suite. Licensing for MDVM is typically associated with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint licensing, as MDVM is included as part of that suite. Microsoft offers various licensing options for Microsoft...

Recommendations and remediation

An integral part of the MDVM is the Devices page, placed under the Assets category, where you can view all devices protected with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint—ones for which the software inventories will be assessed by MDVM—and all their details, such as risk and exposure level, tags, incidents and alerts, timeline, security recommendations, and security policies, as well as software inventory, discovered vulnerabilities, and much more.

Important note

More about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Devices, and related pages is described in more detail in Chapter 4. In this chapter, we will focus on MDVM features.

Security recommendations

The Security recommendations page contains information about protected devices’ security recommendations, operating system versions and related OS components, the number of weaknesses found, remediation types and activities, impact on the secure score and overall security posture, the...

Inventories and weaknesses

To understand the software landscape throughout your organization’s MDVM, use the Inventories page, where you can dive deeper into browser extensions usage and the state of certificates and firmware vulnerabilities, whereas the Weaknesses page contains a list of common vulnerabilities exploits (CVEs) currently applicable to your environment. Let’s get into more detail about each of these two important MDVM pages.

Inventories

The vulnerability management Inventory page gives you an understanding of the software usage in your organization in the past 30 days. Similar to the Recommendations page, this software usage information page has the same columns, such as weaknesses, threats, vendors, and others, but here, this information is relevant to the median usage of the software rather than to the specific recommendation or a vulnerability:

Figure 7.15 – MDVM inventories page

On the Inventories page, besides...

Summary

MDVM is a cybersecurity solution that helps organizations identify, assess, and remediate vulnerabilities in their IT infrastructure. It integrates with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other Microsoft security tools to provide a comprehensive and user-friendly security platform. With Defender Vulnerability Management, you can enable your security and IT teams to work together and focus on the most urgent vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in your organization.

In the next chapter, we will cover Microsoft Defender for Identity, a cloud-based security solution that protects on-premises Active Directory environments from advanced and targeted attacks, monitors user activities, devices, and resources, and detects anomalies and threats using machine learning and behavioral analysis.