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Investigate weaknesses with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

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  • 2 minutes to read

Microsoft's Defender Vulnerability Management is a built-in module in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint that can:

  • Discover vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in near real time
  • Prioritize vulnerabilities based on the threat landscape and detections in your organization

If you've enabled the integration with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, you'll automatically get the Defender Vulnerability Management findings without the need for more agents.

As it's a built-in module for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Defender Vulnerability Management doesn't require periodic scans.

For a quick overview of Defender Vulnerability Management, watch this video:

Tip

As well as alerting you to vulnerabilities, Defender Vulnerability Management also provides functionality for Defender for Cloud's asset inventory tool. Learn more in Software inventory.

You can learn more by watching this video from the Defender for Cloud in the Field video series:

Availability

Aspect Details
Release state: General availability (GA)
Machine types: Azure virtual machines
Azure Arc-enabled machines
Supported machines
Pricing: Requires Microsoft Defender for Servers Plan 1 or Plan 2
Prerequisites: Enable the integration with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Required roles and permissions: Owner (resource group level) can deploy the scanner
Security Reader can view findings
Clouds: Commercial clouds
National (Azure Government, Azure China 21Vianet)

Onboarding your machines to Defender Vulnerability Management

The integration between Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Defender for Cloud takes place in the background, so it doesn't involve any changes at the endpoint level.

  • To manually onboard one or more machines to Defender Vulnerability Management, use the security recommendation "Machines should have a vulnerability assessment solution":

    Selecting a vulnerability assessment solution from the recommendation.

  • To automatically find and view the vulnerabilities on existing and new machines without the need to manually remediate the preceding recommendation, see Automatically configure vulnerability assessment for your machines.

  • To onboard via the REST API, run PUT/DELETE using this URL: https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/.../resourceGroups/.../providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/.../providers/Microsoft.Security/serverVulnerabilityAssessments/mdetvm?api-version=2015-06-01-preview

The findings for all vulnerability assessment tools are in the Defender for Cloud recommendation Vulnerabilities in your virtual machines should be remediated. Learn about how to view and remediate findings from vulnerability assessment solutions on your VMs

Learn more

You can check out the following blogs:

Next steps

Remediate the findings from your vulnerability assessment solution

Defender for Cloud also offers vulnerability analysis for your: