Continuous Vulnerability Management That Eliminates Risk Before Attackers Strike
Petronella Technology Group delivers a fully managed vulnerability management program that goes far beyond scanning. We discover every asset on your network, identify known CVEs across operating systems, firmware, and applications, prioritize findings using CVSS scoring enriched with real-world threat intelligence, orchestrate patching on your schedule, and verify remediation through re-scanning — all backed by 24/7 analyst oversight. Serving Raleigh-Durham Triangle businesses and clients nationwide since 2002.
What Is Vulnerability Management?
Vulnerability management is the continuous, systematic practice of identifying, classifying, prioritizing, remediating, and verifying security weaknesses across every layer of your technology environment. It is not a single scan or an annual checkbox. It is an ongoing operational discipline that treats your attack surface as a living system — one that changes every time a server is provisioned, a patch is released, an employee installs software, or a cloud workload is deployed.
At its core, vulnerability management revolves around Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) — standardized identifiers assigned by MITRE to publicly disclosed security flaws. Each CVE receives a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score ranging from 0.0 to 10.0 that quantifies severity across metrics like attack vector, attack complexity, privileges required, user interaction, scope, and impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. A CVSS score of 9.0 or above is classified as Critical; 7.0–8.9 is High; 4.0–6.9 is Medium; and 0.1–3.9 is Low.
However, raw CVSS scores alone do not tell you what to patch first. A CVSS 9.8 remote code execution flaw on a sandboxed development server poses less immediate risk than a CVSS 7.5 privilege escalation on your internet-facing domain controller. Effective vulnerability management layers threat intelligence, asset criticality, exploit maturity, and network context on top of CVSS to produce risk-based prioritization — the difference between drowning in alerts and systematically reducing your attack surface.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-40 defines vulnerability management as encompassing asset inventory, vulnerability scanning, analysis and prioritization, remediation, and verification. PTG builds on this framework by adding continuous monitoring, threat-intelligence enrichment, managed patch orchestration, and compliance mapping specific to the regulatory obligations most relevant to Raleigh-Durham area organizations: HIPAA for healthcare providers, CMMC 2.0 for defense contractors supporting the DoD supply chain, PCI DSS for payment card processors, NIST 800-171 for contractors handling Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), and SOC 2 for technology and SaaS companies.
Without a mature vulnerability management program, organizations face a compounding problem. NIST's National Vulnerability Database (NVD) cataloged over 28,000 new CVEs in 2024 alone. Each represents a potential entry point an adversary could exploit. The average enterprise environment contains tens of thousands of software components, each carrying its own set of known vulnerabilities that changes with every release cycle. Manual tracking is impossible. Periodic quarterly scans leave windows of exposure lasting 60 to 90 days. PTG's managed approach closes those gaps with continuous scanning, real-time prioritization, and structured remediation workflows that keep your vulnerability backlog shrinking rather than growing.
Vulnerability Management vs. Penetration Testing
Organizations frequently conflate vulnerability management with penetration testing. They are complementary but fundamentally different disciplines. Vulnerability management is a continuous operational program; penetration testing is a point-in-time adversarial simulation. You need both, but understanding the distinction is critical for allocating budget and measuring outcomes.
| Dimension | Vulnerability Management | Penetration Testing |
|---|---|---|
| Cadence | Continuous — scans run daily or weekly with real-time asset discovery | Periodic — typically annual or semi-annual engagements |
| Methodology | Automated scanning against CVE databases with analyst-curated prioritization | Manual exploitation by ethical hackers simulating real attacker tactics |
| Scope | Entire attack surface: every endpoint, server, cloud instance, application | Focused scope defined per engagement: specific applications, network segments, or scenarios |
| Output | Ongoing vulnerability inventory with risk scores, trends, SLA tracking, and compliance mapping | Narrative report detailing exploited attack chains, business impact, and strategic recommendations |
| Primary Goal | Systematic risk reduction by eliminating known weaknesses across the environment | Validate security controls by demonstrating what an attacker could actually achieve |
| Compliance Use | Satisfies continuous monitoring controls (HIPAA, CMMC RA.L2-3.11.2, PCI DSS 11.3.1) | Satisfies periodic assessment controls (CMMC CA.L2-3.12.1, PCI DSS 11.4) |
PTG delivers both services. Our vulnerability management program provides the continuous foundation, while our penetration testing engagements validate that the vulnerabilities being remediated are truly reducing exploitable risk. Findings from penetration tests feed back into the vulnerability management program, creating a closed-loop improvement cycle that Triangle-area defense contractors, healthcare organizations, and financial firms rely on for audit readiness.
The Four Pillars of PTG Vulnerability Management
Our managed vulnerability management service is structured around four operational pillars that transform raw scan data into measurable attack surface reduction.
Pillar 1: Continuous Scanning
PTG deploys authenticated and unauthenticated vulnerability scans across your entire infrastructure on a continuous basis. External-facing assets — firewalls, VPN concentrators, web servers, public DNS records — are scanned daily. Internal network segments are scanned on a weekly or biweekly cadence aligned with your change management windows. Authenticated scans use credentialed agents or service accounts to inspect installed software versions, registry keys, configuration files, and applied patches at the operating system level, catching vulnerabilities that unauthenticated network scans miss entirely.
Our scanning covers Windows, Linux, and macOS endpoints; VMware and Hyper-V hypervisors; network infrastructure including Cisco, Palo Alto, and Fortinet devices; web applications; container images in Docker and Kubernetes clusters; and cloud workloads in AWS, Azure, and GCP. Each scan correlates discovered software versions against the NIST NVD, vendor security advisories, and zero-day intelligence feeds. New assets appearing on the network through DHCP, cloud auto-scaling, or shadow IT provisioning are detected by our asset discovery engine and automatically added to the scan scope.
Pillar 2: Risk-Based Prioritization
A typical enterprise scan cycle produces thousands of findings. Patching every CVE simultaneously is neither feasible nor necessary. PTG's prioritization engine scores each vulnerability using a composite model that accounts for: CVSS base score (severity of the flaw itself), exploit maturity (is a weaponized exploit publicly available on Exploit-DB, Metasploit, or GitHub?), active exploitation (is CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog or threat intelligence feeds reporting active campaigns targeting this CVE?), asset criticality (is the affected host a domain controller, database server, or workstation?), network exposure (is the asset directly internet-accessible or segmented behind multiple firewall zones?), and compensating controls (is there an IPS signature, WAF rule, or EDR detection mitigating the risk?).
This multi-factor scoring produces a remediation queue ordered by actual exploitable risk to your business. A CVE with a CVSS 9.8 score, a public Metasploit module, active exploitation tracked by CISA, and presence on your internet-facing Exchange server will appear at the very top of the queue, while a CVSS 9.8 flaw on a sandboxed development VM with no public exploit and no network exposure will be deprioritized appropriately. Our analysts review the top-tier findings to eliminate false positives and add remediation context before delivering the queue to your team.
Pillar 3: Managed Remediation
Identifying vulnerabilities is only half the equation. PTG's managed remediation service ensures they actually get fixed. For each prioritized finding, we generate a remediation ticket containing the CVE identifier, affected assets, specific patch or configuration change required, vendor advisory link, and a risk-level-based SLA. Critical findings carry a 24-to-48-hour SLA. High findings carry 7 days. Medium and Low findings are tracked on 30-day and 90-day cycles respectively.
For clients who subscribe to our managed patching service, PTG handles patch deployment directly. Our patch orchestration workflow evaluates each patch against a test matrix, deploys to a pilot group, monitors for regressions over a defined soak period, then rolls out to production in stages. Rollback procedures are defined before every deployment. For vulnerabilities where no vendor patch exists — zero-days, end-of-life software, or firmware limitations — we implement compensating controls: firewall rules, IPS signatures, application-layer blocks, privilege restrictions, or network segmentation to reduce the exposure until a permanent fix becomes available.
Pillar 4: Verification & Reporting
Every remediation action triggers an automated re-scan of the affected assets to confirm the vulnerability has been eliminated. Patches that fail to apply, configuration changes that revert, or software upgrades that introduce new dependencies are caught immediately and recycled back into the remediation queue. This closed-loop verification prevents the false sense of security that comes from marking tickets complete without confirming the fix.
PTG's reporting layer delivers three tiers of visibility. Executive dashboards display trending risk scores, vulnerability density per business unit, mean time to remediate (MTTR), and SLA compliance percentages — the metrics boards and insurers want to see. Technical reports detail every open finding with CVSS score, exploit status, affected hosts, and step-by-step remediation guidance. Compliance reports map vulnerability management activities to specific controls in HIPAA, CMMC, PCI DSS, NIST 800-171, and SOC 2, producing the audit evidence that assessors require. Reports are accessible through our secure portal or delivered as scheduled PDF exports.
Our Vulnerability Management Technology Stack
PTG integrates best-of-breed scanning engines with our managed service layer to deliver comprehensive coverage across your entire attack surface.
Network Vulnerability Scanning
Authenticated and unauthenticated network scans identify missing patches, misconfigurations, default credentials, expired certificates, and weak encryption across servers, workstations, routers, switches, firewalls, and wireless access points. Scans correlate against 200,000+ vulnerability checks updated in real time as new CVEs are published.
Web Application Scanning
Dynamic application security testing (DAST) crawls and tests web applications for OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities including SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), broken authentication, insecure deserialization, and server-side request forgery (SSRF). Authenticated scans test behind login forms to evaluate post-authentication attack surfaces.
Cloud Configuration Assessment
API-based scanning evaluates AWS, Azure, and GCP environments for misconfigured IAM policies, overly permissive S3 buckets or storage blobs, open security groups, unencrypted data stores, disabled logging, and non-compliant resource configurations mapped to CIS Benchmarks and cloud-provider best practices.
Container & Image Scanning
Scans Docker images, Kubernetes manifests, and container registries for known CVEs in base images, application dependencies, and runtime configurations. Detects vulnerabilities in both OS-level packages and application-layer libraries (npm, pip, Maven, Go modules) within container layers.
Endpoint Agent Deployment
Lightweight agents deployed on endpoints provide continuous, credentialed vulnerability assessment without network scan overhead. Agents inventory installed software, applied patches, running services, and local configurations, reporting back to the central platform. Ideal for remote and hybrid workforces where network-based scanning cannot reach every device.
Threat Intelligence Correlation
Our platform ingests threat intelligence from CISA KEV, vendor advisories, exploit databases, dark web monitoring, and commercial feeds. When a CVE transitions from theoretical risk to active exploitation, it is automatically reprioritized in your remediation queue. Emergency notifications alert your team and ours when zero-day threats affect assets in your environment.
Compliance Framework Alignment
Vulnerability management is not optional under modern regulatory frameworks. PTG maps every scan, prioritization decision, remediation action, and verification result to the specific controls your auditors evaluate.
CMMC 2.0 & NIST 800-171
Defense contractors handling CUI must satisfy NIST 800-171 controls RA-5 (Vulnerability Monitoring and Scanning) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation) to achieve CMMC Level 2 certification. Our program produces evidence for practices RA.L2-3.11.2 (scan for vulnerabilities in organizational systems periodically and when new vulnerabilities affecting those systems are identified) and RA.L2-3.11.3 (remediate vulnerabilities in accordance with risk assessments). PTG generates POAM-ready documentation tracking open vulnerabilities, planned remediation dates, and responsible parties — exactly what CMMC assessors require. Craig Petronella holds CMMC CRP certification, ensuring our program aligns precisely with assessment methodology.
HIPAA Security Rule
The HIPAA Security Rule requires covered entities and business associates to conduct an accurate and thorough assessment of potential risks and vulnerabilities to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of ePHI (45 CFR 164.308(a)(1)(ii)(A)). Our vulnerability management program provides the technical implementation of this requirement with continuous scanning of systems that store, process, or transmit protected health information. Healthcare organizations across the Raleigh-Durham Triangle use PTG to maintain the ongoing technical evaluation that HIPAA demands and that OCR investigators look for during breach investigations.
PCI DSS 4.0
PCI DSS 4.0 Requirement 11.3.1 mandates internal vulnerability scanning at least quarterly and after any significant change, while Requirement 11.3.2 requires quarterly external scans by an Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV). Our scanning cadence exceeds these minimums with continuous internal scanning and daily external scanning. PTG produces ASV-compliant external scan reports and internal vulnerability reports formatted for your QSA's review, eliminating the last-minute scramble before quarterly deadlines that many payment card handlers experience.
SOC 2 Type II
SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria CC7.1 requires organizations to detect and monitor changes to configurations and new vulnerabilities. Our vulnerability management program provides the continuous detection evidence that SOC 2 auditors need, including trend data showing vulnerability counts over the full audit period, remediation SLA compliance metrics, and exception documentation for any findings that exceeded their remediation window. Technology companies and SaaS providers across Research Triangle Park rely on PTG's reporting to satisfy their SOC 2 auditor's requests without additional preparation.
Our Six-Phase Vulnerability Management Lifecycle
Every engagement follows a structured lifecycle that transforms raw scan data into measurable, auditable risk reduction.
Discovery
Complete asset inventory across on-premises, cloud, and remote endpoints. Identify shadow IT and unmanaged devices.
Scan
Authenticated and unauthenticated scans against 200K+ checks. Daily external, weekly internal, on-demand emergency.
Prioritize
Multi-factor risk scoring: CVSS + exploit maturity + CISA KEV + asset value + network exposure + compensating controls.
Remediate
Ticketed remediation with SLAs. Managed patching with test → pilot → production rollout and rollback plans.
Verify
Automated re-scan after remediation. Failed patches are recycled. Closed-loop confirmation prevents false assurance.
Report
Executive dashboards, technical detail reports, and compliance-mapped evidence for HIPAA, CMMC, PCI DSS, SOC 2.
Vulnerability Management Questions Answered
What is the difference between vulnerability management and vulnerability scanning?
Vulnerability scanning is one component of vulnerability management. A scan identifies known CVEs present in your environment at a point in time. Vulnerability management is the full lifecycle program that includes continuous asset discovery, recurring scanning, risk-based prioritization using CVSS scores and threat intelligence, tracked remediation with defined SLAs, verification through re-scanning, compliance reporting, and metrics-driven improvement over time. PTG delivers the complete program as a managed service so your team receives prioritized remediation queues, not raw scan dumps.
How does CVSS scoring work and why is it not enough on its own?
The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) rates vulnerabilities on a 0.0 to 10.0 scale across metrics including attack vector (network, adjacent, local, physical), attack complexity, privileges required, user interaction, scope, and impact to confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVSS provides a standardized severity baseline, but it does not account for your specific environment. A CVSS 9.8 flaw on an isolated test server carries less real risk than a CVSS 7.2 flaw on your internet-facing email gateway. PTG enriches CVSS with exploit maturity, CISA Known Exploited Vulnerability status, asset criticality, and network exposure to produce risk scores that reflect actual danger to your business.
How often should vulnerability scans be run?
PTG scans external-facing assets daily and internal networks weekly or biweekly depending on environment size and change velocity. Compliance frameworks set minimum floors: PCI DSS requires quarterly external ASV scans and quarterly internal scans; NIST 800-171 requires periodic scanning and scanning when new vulnerabilities are identified; HIPAA requires ongoing technical evaluation. Our continuous approach exceeds every framework minimum. When high-profile zero-day vulnerabilities are disclosed, we initiate emergency out-of-cycle scans within hours to assess your exposure.
What types of assets do you scan?
Our scanning covers Windows, Linux, and macOS endpoints and servers; network devices from Cisco, Palo Alto, Fortinet, and others; VMware and Hyper-V hypervisors; web applications; APIs; Docker containers and Kubernetes clusters; cloud infrastructure in AWS, Azure, and GCP; IoT and operational technology devices where safe scanning is possible; wireless infrastructure; and SaaS configuration auditing for platforms like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Salesforce. Endpoint agents extend coverage to remote and hybrid workers whose devices are not always on the corporate network.
Do you handle patching or just identify vulnerabilities?
PTG offers both identification and managed remediation. Our standard vulnerability management service delivers prioritized findings with specific remediation guidance. Our managed patching add-on handles the full deployment lifecycle: patch evaluation against a compatibility matrix, deployment to a test group, a monitored soak period, staged production rollout, rollback procedures, and post-patch verification scanning. For Raleigh-Durham businesses that lack the staff for systematic patch management, our team manages the entire process end to end. Call (919) 348-4912 to discuss which tier fits your needs.
What happens when a zero-day vulnerability is disclosed?
When a critical zero-day is disclosed — such as the Log4Shell (CVE-2021-44228), MOVEit (CVE-2023-34362), or Citrix Bleed (CVE-2023-4966) class of vulnerabilities — PTG initiates an emergency response workflow. Within hours, our team runs targeted scans to identify every affected asset in your environment. If a vendor patch is available, we fast-track it through our patching pipeline with an expedited SLA. If no patch exists, we immediately implement compensating controls: firewall rules blocking exploitation vectors, IPS signatures, application-layer mitigations, or network isolation of vulnerable systems. You receive a detailed exposure report and remediation timeline within 24 hours.
How does vulnerability management support CMMC certification?
CMMC Level 2 requires implementation of NIST 800-171 controls including RA-5 (Vulnerability Monitoring and Scanning) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation). PTG's program provides the technical implementation and audit evidence for these controls: documented scanning schedules, scan results with timestamps, risk-based prioritization methodology, remediation tickets with SLA tracking, verification scan results, and trend reporting showing improvement over time. We generate POAM entries for any vulnerability that cannot be remediated within its SLA window, documenting the planned remediation date, responsible party, and interim mitigations. Craig Petronella is a certified CMMC Registered Practitioner (CRP), and our program is built to withstand C3PAO assessment scrutiny.
Will scanning impact our network performance or system availability?
PTG configures all scanning with performance safeguards. We implement bandwidth throttling to limit scan traffic to a percentage of available bandwidth, stagger scan jobs across network segments to prevent concurrent load, schedule intensive authenticated scans during maintenance windows, and use lightweight endpoint agents that consume minimal CPU and memory. Our scanning platform includes built-in rate limiting and target responsiveness monitoring that automatically throttles or pauses scans if it detects degraded system performance. In over two decades and thousands of client environments, PTG has never caused a system outage or significant performance degradation from vulnerability scanning.
What reporting and metrics do you provide?
PTG delivers three reporting tiers. Executive dashboards show aggregate risk scores, vulnerability density trends, MTTR by severity, SLA compliance rates, and month-over-month improvement. Technical reports list every open vulnerability with CVE identifier, CVSS score, exploit status, affected assets, and step-by-step remediation instructions. Compliance reports map vulnerability management activities to specific controls in HIPAA, CMMC, PCI DSS, NIST 800-171, and SOC 2 frameworks. All reports are accessible through our secure web portal with role-based access. Scheduled PDF exports can be delivered to stakeholders who need offline access.
Do you serve clients outside the Raleigh-Durham area?
Yes. While PTG is headquartered at 5540 Centerview Dr, Suite 200, Raleigh, NC 27606 and provides on-site support throughout the Triangle — Durham, Chapel Hill, RTP, Cary, Apex, and surrounding areas — our cloud-based scanning platform and managed service model serve clients nationwide. Remote deployment, cloud-native scanning, and endpoint agents mean we deliver the same continuous vulnerability management capabilities regardless of geographic location. Defense contractors, healthcare organizations, and technology companies across the United States rely on PTG's managed vulnerability management program.
See Every Vulnerability. Fix What Matters First.
Schedule your free vulnerability assessment with Petronella Technology Group. Our team will scan your environment, identify your most critical exposures, and show you how managed vulnerability management systematically reduces your attack surface. No obligation. No sales pressure. Just a clear picture of your risk.
BBB Accredited Since 2003 • Founded 2002 • 2,500+ Clients Served • 5540 Centerview Dr, Suite 200, Raleigh, NC 27606