Proactive vulnerability management is essential for maintaining secure, resilient software systems. This scorecard rule measures your organization's security posture by tracking the percentage of APM entities with detected vulnerabilities, enabling you to systematically identify, prioritize, and remediate security risks before they become incidents.

Why vulnerability management matters

Risk mitigation: Early detection and remediation of vulnerabilities prevents security breaches, data loss, and service disruptions that can significantly impact your business.

Compliance requirements: Many regulatory frameworks require systematic vulnerability management practices, making this scorecard rule essential for compliance demonstration.

Cost avoidance: Proactive vulnerability management is significantly less expensive than responding to security incidents, breaches, or compliance violations.

Customer trust: Demonstrable security practices build customer confidence and protect your organization's reputation in an increasingly security-conscious market.

Supply chain security: Modern applications rely on numerous third-party libraries and dependencies, making systematic vulnerability scanning critical for understanding your complete risk surface.

How this rule works

This rule evaluates the percentage of your APM entities that have detected vulnerabilities using New Relic Security. The measurement provides insight into your overall security posture and helps prioritize security remediation efforts.

Success criteria: Lower percentages of entities with vulnerabilities indicate better security hygiene and more effective vulnerability management processes. The goal is to minimize the percentage of vulnerable entities through systematic detection and remediation.

Rule definition

This scorecard rule measures security effectiveness by evaluating vulnerability presence across your application portfolio.

Measurement criteria

Metric evaluated: Percentage of APM entities with detected vulnerabilities Data source: New Relic Security vulnerability scanning and detection Success target: Minimize the percentage of entities with unresolved vulnerabilities Assessment scope: All APM entities within your monitoring environment

Understanding vulnerability detection

What New Relic Security identifies:

• Known vulnerabilities in application dependencies and libraries
• Security issues in third-party packages and frameworks
• Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database matches
• Supply chain security risks from open source components

Vulnerability assessment process:

• Continuous scanning of application components and dependencies
• Real-time identification of newly discovered vulnerabilities
• Severity scoring and risk prioritization based on industry standards (CVSS)
• Integration with threat intelligence feeds for up-to-date risk information

The mastery level approach

Proactive security culture: At Level 3, organizations shift from reactive security responses to proactive vulnerability management integrated into development workflows.

Systematic risk management: This level emphasizes continuous monitoring, automated detection, and data-driven prioritization of security remediation efforts.

Business risk alignment: Security decisions are made based on business impact assessment, balancing security improvements with operational efficiency and development velocity.

Organizational capability: Mastery level organizations have established processes, tools, and team collaboration patterns that enable sustainable vulnerability management at scale.

Vulnerability management strategies

When your scorecard shows entities with vulnerabilities, these strategies will help you establish comprehensive security practices:

1. Establish vulnerability assessment processes

Vulnerability discovery and inventory:

• Configure comprehensive vulnerability scanning across all APM entities
• Establish regular scanning schedules that align with your development and deployment cycles
• Create centralized vulnerability inventory and tracking systems
• Implement automated discovery of new dependencies and third-party components

Risk assessment and prioritization:

• Develop vulnerability scoring criteria that considers CVSS scores, exploitability, and business impact
• Create priority matrices that balance security risk with business criticality
• Establish clear escalation procedures for critical and high-severity vulnerabilities
• Implement risk acceptance processes for low-priority vulnerabilities that cannot be immediately remediated

2. Build effective remediation workflows

Cross-team collaboration:

• Establish security champion programs within development teams
• Create clear communication channels between security, development, and operations teams
• Implement regular security review meetings and vulnerability status reporting
• Develop shared responsibility models for vulnerability remediation

Remediation planning and execution:

• Create standardized remediation procedures for different vulnerability types
• Establish timelines and SLAs for vulnerability remediation based on severity levels
• Implement testing procedures to ensure remediation doesn't introduce new issues
• Develop rollback plans for remediation activities that cause problems

Dependency management:

• Implement automated dependency scanning in CI/CD pipelines
• Establish policies for approving new dependencies and third-party libraries
• Create procedures for evaluating and updating existing dependencies
• Implement software bill of materials (SBOM) tracking for supply chain visibility

3. Integrate security into development workflows

Shift-left security practices:

• Integrate vulnerability scanning into development environments and IDE plugins
• Implement pre-commit hooks that check for known vulnerable dependencies
• Provide developer training on secure coding practices and vulnerability awareness
• Create security testing procedures that run alongside functional testing

CI/CD pipeline integration:

• Add vulnerability scanning gates to deployment pipelines
• Implement automated blocking of deployments with critical vulnerabilities
• Create exemption processes for urgent deployments with documented risk acceptance
• Establish automated notification systems for newly discovered vulnerabilities

Security metrics and reporting:

• Implement dashboards that track vulnerability remediation progress
• Create regular security reporting for executive and technical stakeholders
• Establish metrics for measuring security improvement over time
• Use vulnerability data to inform security investment and resource allocation decisions

4. Advanced vulnerability management practices

Threat intelligence integration:

• Integrate external threat intelligence feeds with vulnerability data
• Implement contextual risk assessment based on current threat landscape
• Create alert systems for vulnerabilities that are actively being exploited
• Establish procedures for emergency response to zero-day vulnerabilities

Automation and orchestration:

• Implement automated vulnerability remediation for low-risk, well-understood fixes
• Create automated testing and validation for security patches
• Establish automated rollback procedures for failed remediation attempts
• Use orchestration tools to coordinate complex, multi-service security updates

Continuous improvement:

• Conduct regular security assessments and penetration testing
• Implement lessons learned processes for security incidents and remediation efforts
• Establish metrics for measuring the effectiveness of vulnerability management processes
• Create feedback loops between vulnerability management and development practices

Implementation guidance

Setting up comprehensive vulnerability management

1. Configure New Relic Security with appropriate scanning policies and coverage across all APM entities
2. Establish baseline measurements of current vulnerability landscape and remediation capacity
3. Create vulnerability management workflows that integrate with existing development and operations processes
4. Implement tracking and reporting systems to monitor progress and communicate status to stakeholders

Building organizational capability

Team structure and roles:

• Define clear roles and responsibilities for vulnerability management across teams
• Establish security champion networks within development teams
• Create escalation procedures for critical vulnerabilities and security incidents
• Implement cross-functional training programs for security awareness

Process standardization:

• Develop standardized procedures for vulnerability assessment, prioritization, and remediation
• Create templates and checklists for common vulnerability remediation activities
• Establish change management procedures for security-related updates
• Implement documentation standards for security decisions and risk acceptance

Tool integration:

• Integrate vulnerability management tools with existing development workflows
• Establish single sources of truth for vulnerability data and remediation status
• Create automated reporting and notification systems
• Implement integration between security tools and project management systems

Measuring success and continuous improvement

Key performance indicators:

• Time to detect newly discovered vulnerabilities
• Mean time to remediation for different vulnerability severity levels
• Percentage of entities with unresolved vulnerabilities over time
• Number of security incidents related to unpatched vulnerabilities

Regular assessment and improvement:

• Conduct quarterly reviews of vulnerability management effectiveness
• Implement feedback collection from development teams on security processes
• Regularly update procedures based on new threats and lessons learned
• Establish benchmarking against industry standards and best practices

Important considerations

Risk-based prioritization: Not all vulnerabilities require immediate remediation. Develop risk assessment frameworks that consider vulnerability severity, asset criticality, exploitability, and business impact to make informed prioritization decisions.

False positive management: Vulnerability scanners can generate false positives. Establish processes for validating vulnerabilities and managing scanner accuracy to avoid wasting resources on non-existent risks.

Business continuity balance: Security improvements must be balanced with business operations and development velocity. Establish clear policies for when security concerns override operational considerations and vice versa.

Dependency management complexity: Modern applications have complex dependency trees. Consider the full impact of dependency updates, including potential breaking changes and compatibility issues.

Compliance requirements: Different industries have varying vulnerability management requirements. Ensure your processes meet applicable regulatory and compliance standards for your organization.

Common challenges and solutions

Resource constraints: Address by implementing risk-based prioritization, automation of routine tasks, and integration with existing workflows to maximize efficiency.

Cross-team coordination: Solve through clear role definition, regular communication, shared tools and dashboards, and establishment of security champions within development teams.

Alert fatigue: Manage by implementing intelligent filtering, prioritization algorithms, and automated remediation for low-risk vulnerabilities.

Technical debt: Address by incorporating security improvements into regular maintenance cycles and technical debt reduction initiatives.

Next steps

After implementing this scorecard rule:

1. Complete the Engineering Excellence framework by ensuring CPU Utilization, Memory Utilization, and Change Tracking rules are implemented
2. Explore complementary security practices through Error tracking optimization to identify security-related errors
3. Implement advanced security monitoring by exploring additional New Relic Security capabilities for comprehensive threat detection
4. Consider the broader Observability Maturity framework for holistic improvement across all observability domains