Securing critical infrastructure: Actionable, hands-on vulnerability management in line with NIS2

Customer

Anonymous for security reasons

Industry

Public

A government organization, responsible for critical functions and public services, operating a complex IT/OT infrastructure across multiple sites and platforms, engaged Trifork Cyber Protection to meet stringent security requirements and high availability demands to ensure uninterrupted service delivery.

Faced with escalating cyber threats and the heightened regulatory landscape introduced by the EU NIS2 directive, the organization uncov-ered critical gaps in its vulnerability manage-ment capabilities. These included a fragmented approach to asset identification, vulnerability detection, handling, and remediation; limited visibility across hybrid IT/OT environments and networks; inconsistent and irregular patching routines; untracked legacy systems; and a lack of centralized governance for technical vulner-ability risk prioritization.

Program to improve security posture, support and meet regulatory compliance requirements and reduce risk across multiple networks, business-critical systems, as dictated by the compliance requirements set forth in EU-NIS2.

The right approach ensures the right output

To address these challenges, the organization engaged Trifork Cyber Protection as a trusted partner to design and lead a comprehensive vulnerability management program with coverage across the full organization, spanning all IT and OT assets. The engagement combined strategic governance, tactical decision-mak-ing, supported by deep technical execution – all with an agile, continuous improvement-ap-proach to the overall program and capability management:

Baseline analysis and direction setting

A thorough review of the organization’s current state and alignment through multifaceted scenarios was delivered in a cost/benefit case presentation. This supported senior leadership and key stakeholders in their selection process, defining the right tactical route for the onwards activities for the capability area, ensuring the compliance thresholds in NIS2 and other included compliance standards and regulatory requirements is met, while safeguarding and ensuring the highest business value possible with the set budget and scope.

Insight, visibility & inventory consolidation

Establishing a unified asset inventory and baseline of technical vulnerabilities, based on technical asset parameters and business linking, incl. potential impact on correlating business-services, & inherent impact on society upon a successful attack.

Risk-based prioritization-engine

A tailored risk model was developed to prioritize vulnerabilities, enabling the organization to shift from reactive patching to risk-based remedi-ation.

Patch & lifecycle improvements

Processes were implemented to streamline and automate patching routines & activities.

Governance and ownership

Setup of the governance structure, ensuring clear mandate, and key stakeholder focus.

Governance and ownership

Dashboards, KPIs and KRIs were established to track progress, state, coverage and mean time to remediate (MTTR).

Key outcomes of the engagement

Centralized visibility across IT and OT assets, including legacy environments.

Established management-signoff on patch & mitigation SLAs, and documented exception handling for highly-exposed services.

Improved compliance readiness with structured, defensible vulnerability handling processes and lifecycle management, trace-ability and compliance evidence.

Significant reduction in technical audit findings related to system maintenance and threat exposure.

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