How Vulnerability Management Helps You with GDPR Compliance

This whitepaper shows you how good vulnerability management practices help you meet the security levels mandated by the GDPR. We’ll also tell you how our solution, F-Secure Radar, can aid you in that process.

GDPR Reminder: the What, the Where, and the Why?

What?
The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect in May of 2018. The regulation sets a mandate for the protection and handling requirements of the private, Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of all EU citizens.

Where?
Everywhere, period. If you access, control, process, or store EU citizens’ data, you are subject to the provisions set by the GDPR. You are also subject to penalties for GDPR violations, regardless of whether your organization operates within the European Union or outside it.

Why?
We don’t need to tell you that Spectre and Meltdown were wake-up calls to the world of data security. But did you know that under the GDPR you can be punished for existing security vulnerabilities in your GDPR-related systems? We’d like to help clarify some of the ins and outs of what the EU believes a good vulnerability management program looks like. We’ll also tell you how to implement available vulnerability tools effectively.

Vulnerability Management Reduces Costs

“It’s easy to meet expenses — everywhere we go, there they are.”

Better security rarely comes free, and managing your IT vulnerabilities is no exception. Still, the expenses associated with proper Vulnerability Management (VM) are extremely low compared to the costs of GDPR fines, not to mention damages caused by a breach itself.

Many companies around the globe are overwhelmed by GDPR compliance. They opt to close their systems to EU citizens, cutting themselves off from the potential business generated by the second largest economy on the planet. Others choose to ignore the mandates entirely and hope the GDPR will just go away, exposing themselves to violations and the penalties that they bring.

Penalties and missed opportunities aside, what kind of costs come from the fallout of a breach?

Things like:

• Customers losing trust and jumping ship
• The worker hours that go into identifying and containing a breach
• Wages paid to employees that can’t do their work due to system shutdown
• Business lost during shutdown

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is a wise saying. It applies especially well to Vulnerability Management mitigating the potential costs of a data breach.

Vulnerability Management Lowers Risk

“Good scanning is half the battle.”

The costs associated with a data breach are clearly significant. So how do you mitigate the risk of hackers performing a successful attack on your organization?

Vulnerabilities like Spectre and Meltdown were identified and had patches created for them well before any large-scale attacks occurred. You’d think that we’d never even hear of them. But how many companies out there are actively using effective vulnerability management tools? Who scans their system regularly, makes risk assessments, prioritizes which systems should be patched first, and documents their procedures fully and correctly?

A lot fewer than you might expect.