Vulnerabilities, the bugbear of system administrators and security analysts alike, keep on piling up – ruining Friday nights and weekends around the world as those tasked with fixing them work against ever shortening patch deadlines.
In recent years the burden of patching vulnerable software may have felt to be lessening; and it was, if you were to go by the annual number of vulnerabilities publicly disclosed. However, if you thought 2012 was a little more intense than the previous half-decade, you’ll probably not be surprised to learn that last year bucked the downward trend and saw a rather big jump – 26% over 2011 – all according to the latest analyst brief from NSS Labs, “Vulnerability Threat Trends: A Decade in Review, Transition on the Way”.
Rather than summarize the fascinating brief from NSS Labs with a list of recycled bullet points, I’d encourage you to read it yourself and to view the fascinating video they constructed that depicts the rate and diversity of vulnerability disclosures throughout 2012 (see the video – “The Evolution of 2012 Vulnerability Disclosures by Vendor”).