A New CVSS-Based Tool to Mitigate the Effects of Software Vulnerabilities

Abstract

The organizations are challenged by the number of vulnerabilities in the software and hardware platforms. Successful execution of the operations need to have vulnerabilities clean environment. The U.S. National Vulnerability Database (NVD) uses Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) to score each vulnerability found and provides the detailed description of those security vulnerabilities. The score provided by the NVD is based on the intrinsic and the fundamental characteristics of a vulnerability. This score can further be refined by the organizations to calculate the bearing of the vulnerability on their environment. The purpose of CVSS is to provide a standard way to measure severity of vulnerabilities therefore CVSS version 2.0 calculator contributes less in proposing the solutions to mitigate the effects of vulnerability on a user environment. The growing number of vulnerabilities requires to have more than a simple CVSS calculator that can also propose the remediation actions for the organizations. This research paper reports on the functionality of previously developed software application to enhance the functionalities of standard CVSS version 2.0 calculator. The developed software application is capable of proposing the optimum remedial actions against vulnerabilities for organizations, requiring minimal time and efforts. This software application will be freely available for use.