Key Concept
Vulnerability patch remediation is essential for protecting digital assets from code-level cybersecurity threats introduced by open-source packages in the software supply chain. The process begins with fixing the code, but that alone is not enough. To fully remediate a vulnerability, the patched code must be deployed across all affected software assets. However, this can be challenging because information about where a package is installed across software assets is fragmented, making it difficult to track.
Vulnerability Patch Remediation
Vulnerability patch remediation involves identifying, updating, and verifying security patches to fix software vulnerabilities and prevent exploitation. It’s a comprehensive process that involves finding vulnerabilities, addressing them across multiple versions of code, and most importantly – redeploying the fix across all affected systems.
While tools exist to detect, fix, and test vulnerability patches, the time from discovery to full remediation still exceeds 100 days—while hackers can exploit vulnerabilities in less than 10.
The increase in the number of software vulnerabilities in recent years has made it nearly impossible to manage patching manually. Even after a code fix is published, it can take months for teams to update build and deployment scripts to release the fix into production environments. Remediating such vulnerabilities requires careful mapping, coordination, and deployment, making the deployment of vulnerability patch remediation one of the most labor-intensive steps in securing your software.
A major challenge is that while security patches may be released quickly, organizations struggle with deployment bottlenecks, including dependency issues, testing requirements, and complex CI/CD pipelines. This highlights the need for automated patch management and improved visibility into software dependencies to reduce the time lag. Build and deploy scripts may continue to pull outdated and vulnerable OS libraries into the binaries—without the developer’s full awareness for years. In fact, some teams are still using Log4j versions 2.0 – 2.14.1, because their build scripts continue to refer to the wrong version number.
Unpatched vulnerabilities are one of the leading causes of cyberattacks, posing security threats to organizations. These vulnerabilities can be exploited, which can result in serious breaches, ransomware attacks, and compromised systems. Without timely patching, an organization’s attack surface remains wide open, risking sensitive data and critical assets. According to IBM’s Cost of Data Breach Report a single vulnerability could cost an average of $5.5M, resulting in trillions of dollars globally.
Mean Time to Remediate (MTTR) refers to the average amount of time it takes an organization to fix a security vulnerability after it has been discovered. This metric is critical in cybersecurity and vulnerability management as it helps measure an organization’s ability to respond to threats and minimize risk exposure. According to Edgescan Report, it can take up to 89 days to fully remediate a vulnerability.
In software development, it is rare for a single version of an application to run uniformly across all environments. Deployments are often staged by geographic region, rolled out gradually, or left for end users to update at their discretion. This variation creates a major challenge when addressing security vulnerabilities. When multiple versions of an application are in use, stopping a vulnerability becomes significantly more complex.
With cyber threats evolving rapidly, automating the re-deployment of remediated patches within the CI/CD pipeline is essential, and requires a new type of tooling. In particular, the implementation of a central evidence store to gather package usage and an inventory of where the packages are deployed is critical for quick vulnerability response. The evidence store must be versioned, tracking historical data of where each release has been deployed across all environments with the OS package information for each update. When a vulnerability is reported, this information defines the blast radius, and where the remediation is most urgently needed.
The challenge extends beyond identifying where a vulnerability exists—it also requires ensuring the patch is applied across all affected endpoints, particularly in decoupled architectures. In modern software ecosystems, a single vulnerability in an open-source package can impact thousands of containers, making comprehensive tracking and remediation critical.
Integrating vulnerability patch management into the CI/CD pipeline is essential because it ensures that security vulnerabilities are identified and remediated early in and continuously throughout the development process, reducing the risk of exploitation in production.
Integrating vulnerability patch management into the CI/CD pipeline involves the following steps:
By continuously integrating vulnerability patch management into the CI/CD pipeline, you can proactively safeguard your systems, ensuring they remain secure and resilient in an ever-evolving threat landscape.
Vulnerability patch remediation is an ongoing and critical aspect of maintaining a secure software environment. The number of vulnerabilities is growing, and with the average MTTR sitting at 75 days. It is clear that manual processes are no longer enough to keep up with the pace of cyber threats.
Automating vulnerability patch remediation within the CI/CD pipeline is essential to speed up the detection, assessment, and deployment of patches. By mapping package dependencies to deployed endpoints, scanning continuously for new vulnerabilities, and leveraging SBOMs, organizations can improve their security posture, minimize attack surfaces, and ensure faster remediation times.
DeployHub automates vulnerability patch remediation by tracking the deployment of software components across all environments, using an evidence store to maintain an inventory of OS package dependencies and their deployed locations. Integrating SBOM generation into the CI/CD pipeline ensures continuous scanning, real-time risk assessment, and rapid threat neutralization, reducing Mean Time to Remediation (MTTR) and enhancing security posture from months to minutes.By automating the vulnerability patch remediation process and integrating it into CI/CD workflows, DeployHub ensures continuous protection against emerging cyber threats and accelerates remediation efforts for safer software.
Automating vulnerability patch remediation within the CI/CD pipeline is essential to speed up the detection, assessment, and deployment of patches. By mapping package dependencies to deployed endpoints, scanning continuously for new vulnerabilities, and leveraging SBOMs, organizations can improve their security posture, minimize attack surfaces, and ensure faster remediation times.
DeployHub Pro’s continuous vulnerability management platform monitors open-source vulnerabilities in real-time, allowing teams to make fast remediation decisions as soon as a new vulnerability is found. New threats are found everyday, DeployHub Pro helps you find and fix them.
Take A Tour
Explore Ortelius and experience open-source vulnerability management in action with a quick, hands-on overview. DeployHub Pro, based on Ortelius OS, transforms SBOMs into actionable security intelligence, monitoring open-source packages for vulnerabilities and delivering comprehensive security reports for all logical applications in decoupled architectures. Ortelius is incubating at the Continuous Delivery Foundation.
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