Written by John Markott, Director of Product Management, Carbon Black and I-Lung Kao, BigFix Product Manager, IBM Security

Vulnerability management is one of the biggest problems plaguing the security industry today. According to Gartner’s September 2016 report, “It’s Time to Align Your Vulnerability Management Priorities With the Biggest Threats,” “organizations are struggling to figure out what patches will have the biggest impact on their security.” After all, endpoint management and endpoint security are often delivered by siloed organizations, introducing a gap in critical collaboration and teamwork.

Use Active Attack Remediation to Patch Vulnerabilities Fast

Without visibility into the vulnerabilities being exploited by attackers, patching can become an unwinnable game of whack-a-mole. There are also considerations of cost — none of us can afford to spend time on low-value work. With an average time of over 100 days to patch a vulnerability, this represents an extraordinary financial cost.

Without the right patch priority, malware is able to take root and spread laterally, driving up the organizational risk of a breach as well as the costs to remediate machines. Organizations that “align their vulnerability management priorities with the biggest threats” can stop threats dead in their tracks while lowering the total cost to patch and secure the enterprise.

Carbon Black and IBM are delivering the first and only solution that empowers customers to utilize active attacks to prioritize patching within seconds. Dubbed Active Attack Remediation, this new integration correlates Carbon Black Response’s endpoint data with public Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) databases, delivering a prioritized list to BigFix users of actively exploited vulnerabilities unique to each organization. Offered at no additional cost to customers, this is a great example of what best-of-breed technologies can do, collaborating to solve critical customer issues.

Stop Whacking Moles

IT professionals no longer have to guess which vulnerabilities to prioritize. The visibility and control exposed by this integration enables rapid response to emerging threats, ensuring the moles won’t pop up again. The return on investment (ROI) of this integration is simple: With Active Attack Remediation, IT professionals can now find it, fix it and stop it.

To ensure organizations can easily take advantage of this novel innovation, IBM and Carbon Black also finalized new, global agreements that allow IBM clients to purchase Carbon Black solutions directly from IBM as part of their existing agreements. This enables IBM customers to quickly take advantage of the new integrated BigFix and CB Response solution. Joint customers will experience a simple and streamlined way to adopt both products and to purchase using a known and trusted IBM process.

IBM and Carbon Black are clearly committed to making the lives of information security professionals easier. We are excited to empower you to do what you do best — security. Playing catch-up every day leaves you at risk of playing one step behind the bad guys. Chasing is neither fun nor efficient. Active Attack Remediation provides a tangible approach to aligning your day-to-day operations with your motivation for getting into security in the first place — stopping the bad guys.

Learn more about our joint commitment to improving your security operations.