New Surveys To Gauge Vulnerability Disclosure Awareness And Adoption

A group cybersecurity experts including members from Rapid7 has launched two online surveys on vulnerability disclosure and handling practices and awareness -- one for technology providers and operators and the other for security researchers.

The so-called Awareness and Adoption (A&A) Group, which was formed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), hopes to gain better understanding of vulnerability disclosure and handling best practices. The new online surveys are aimed at gauging the current adoption of security best practices and policies across industry sectors, as well as barriers to adoption, and to provide recommendations.

Identities of survey participants will be kept anonymous, and each survey has no more than ten questions. The final survey findings would be released publicly later this year and will be used to guide vulnerability disclosure and handling best practices.

International Standards Organization (ISO) standards ISO/IEC 29147 and ISO/IEC 30111 provide best practices for vulnerability disclosure and handling, but have not been widely adopted.

“We hope that people will approach these surveys in a spirit of openness so we can understand real world perspectives and make appropriate recommendations,” said Amanda Craig, senior cybersecurity strategist at Microsoft, and co-chair of the A&A Group. “There has traditionally been a perception of a somewhat adversarial relationship between researchers and technology providers and operators. We want to move past this, and the common assumptions it engenders, to understand current experience with, and perspectives on, vulnerability disclosure and handling. It’s only by understanding what’s really happening that we can make meaningful recommendations for increasing adoption of best practices.”

You can take part in the surveys by clicking on the links below. The surveys run through April 30^th, 2016:

Survey for technology providers and operators: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/techprovider 

Survey for security researchers: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/securityresearcher

More details about the survey can be found here.