SOC106 · Vulnerability Management and Patching
About Course
Run a risk-based vulnerability management program: know your assets, scan them safely, prioritize with CVSS, EPSS and the CISA KEV catalog, and patch on a schedule you can prove.
Who it is for
IT administrators, analysts and small-business tech owners responsible for keeping systems patched and secure.
Prerequisites
Complete SOC102 and SOC103, or be comfortable administering Windows or Linux systems.
What you will be able to do
- Build and maintain an asset inventory with owners and criticality
- Scan your own systems and container images with free tools and interpret the findings
- Prioritize vulnerabilities by combining CVSS severity, EPSS likelihood, KEV status and asset exposure
- Design a patching policy with service-level targets, exceptions and verification
Lessons
- Lesson 1 · Assets, exposure and the vulnerability lifecycle
- Lesson 2 · Scanning and risk-based prioritization
- Lesson 3 · Patching policy, exceptions and verification
- Lesson 4 · Lab and assignment
Lab: Scan, prioritize and plan remediation
You scan an intentionally outdated container image and your own Ubuntu lab system with Trivy, export the results, and enrich each CVE with its EPSS score and KEV status. You then rank the findings with a simple risk formula and write a remediation plan with owners and due dates.
Free tools: Trivy (free, open source) with Docker Desktop, an Ubuntu virtual machine or WSL2, the CISA KEV catalog CSV and the FIRST EPSS data, and a spreadsheet
Assessed assignment
Write a vulnerability management policy and a first-cycle remediation plan for a 40-person e-commerce company with a public web store, a payment integration and office laptops. Define scope, scan frequency, prioritization rules, patch service-level targets and the exception process. Apply the rules to your lab scan results and present the top ten items with justification. Include how you will verify that patches were applied.
| Criterion | Weight | What excellent work looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Policy completeness | 25% | Scope, frequency, roles, targets and exceptions are defined clearly and fit the business. |
| Prioritization logic | 30% | Rules combine severity, exploitation likelihood, KEV status and exposure in a consistent, explained way. |
| Application to real findings | 25% | The top ten list follows the rules, is traceable to scan output and has owners and dates. |
| Verification and reporting | 20% | Re-scan and reporting steps prove remediation and show trends to leadership. |
Portfolio piece
A vulnerability management policy with a prioritized remediation plan built from real scan data.
Next step
Continue with SOC107 · Incident Handling and Digital Forensics Basics · 8 hours · $56.00
Course Content
SOC106 · Vulnerability Management and Patching (8 h)
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Lesson 1 · Assets, exposure and the vulnerability lifecycle
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Lesson 2 · Scanning and risk-based prioritization
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Lesson 3 · Patching policy, exceptions and verification
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Lesson 4 · Lab and assignment
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SOC106 Assessment · Vulnerability Management and Patching
