Which approach is essential for tracking and managing vulnerabilities within a system?

Continuous monitoring is essential for tracking and managing vulnerabilities within a system because it involves the systematic examination of the system or network to identify potential security weaknesses and vulnerabilities in real-time or near-real-time. This proactive approach allows organizations to detect changes in the environment, identify new threats, and keep security measures up-to-date. By constantly assessing the security posture and the effectiveness of existing controls, continuous monitoring enables organizations to promptly address vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by attackers.

Additionally, continuous monitoring helps to provide visibility into the security status of various components, maintaining awareness of deviations from normal operations, policy compliance, and potential indicators of compromise. This ongoing process assists in fulfilling regulatory requirements and industry standards focused on cybersecurity, thereby supporting an organization's broader security strategy.

In contrast, while patch management, change management, and access control are vital components of an overall cybersecurity strategy, they do not independently provide the same level of ongoing vigilance and adaptability that continuous monitoring offers when it comes to vulnerability management. Patch management focuses on applying updates and security patches to mitigate known vulnerabilities, change management deals with the handling of changes within the IT environment, and access control is about managing user permissions and authentication, which do not inherently involve continuous oversight of system vulnerabilities.