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Ligala Tech Pte Vulnerability Management and Remediation Policy

Ligala Support

Table of Contents

1. Purpose

This Vulnerability Management and Remediation Policy establishes a formal, repeatable, and risk-based process for identifying, assessing, prioritizing, remediating, and validating security weaknesses across the technology environment used by Ligala Tech Pte. As a small legal technology company serving a highly sensitive industry, Ligala Tech must protect client information, case-related data, credentials, and internal operational assets from unauthorized access, leakage, tampering, and service disruption. This policy creates consistent expectations for how weaknesses are handled across cloud infrastructure, applications, endpoints, and third-party services.

The policy is intended to reduce exposure to legal, regulatory, and operational harm by requiring timely action on vulnerabilities, especially open posture and identity-related weaknesses such as overly permissive AWS IAM roles and other high-severity cloud findings. It supports the company’s need to maintain a defensible security posture while operating efficiently with a small team and limited resources. The policy prioritizes the highest-risk issues first, while still requiring structured handling of lower-severity findings so that vulnerabilities do not accumulate into systemic risk.

This policy also supports compliance obligations tied to Singapore PDPA and ISO 27001 by defining governance, accountability, and evidence expectations. By linking remediation timelines to business impact and data sensitivity, Ligala Tech Pte can demonstrate due diligence, maintain audit-ready records, and reduce the likelihood that security gaps lead to personal data compromise or operational instability.

2. Scope

This policy applies to all production and non-production systems, networks, applications, cloud accounts, identities, devices, code repositories, containers, integrations, and third-party services used, managed, or approved by Ligala Tech Pte. It includes infrastructure hosted by cloud providers, software-as-a-service platforms, internal endpoints, developer workstations, CI/CD systems, and any externally connected service that stores, processes, or transmits company or client data. The scope includes vulnerabilities discovered through internal assessments, automated scanning, vendor notifications, penetration tests, incident investigations, and third-party disclosures.

The policy covers all personnel who design, build, administer, support, or use Ligala Tech systems, including employees, contractors, interns, temporary staff, and authorized third parties. It applies equally to company-owned and personally owned devices when they are authorized to access company systems or data. No environment is exempt from vulnerability handling obligations simply because it is non-production, temporary, or managed by a vendor.

For Ligala Tech Pte, the scope is especially important because legal technology workloads often involve confidential documents, personal data, privileged communications, and externally exposed collaboration platforms. Weaknesses in identity and access management, misconfigured storage, insecure APIs, unpatched endpoints, and third-party dependencies can all create disproportionate risk for a small organization. This policy therefore treats cloud posture issues, access control findings, and third-party exposures as first-class remediation priorities, not secondary concerns.

3. Policy Statement

Ligala Tech Pte shall identify, triage, remediate, and validate vulnerabilities in a timely and documented manner based on risk, asset criticality, exploitability, and data sensitivity. All findings that may expose confidential legal, personal, or operational data must be assessed promptly and assigned an owner responsible for remediation or formal risk acceptance. Vulnerabilities must not remain unowned, untracked, or unresolved beyond the timelines defined in this policy without approved exception handling.

Security weaknesses in identity and access management, internet-facing services, cloud configurations, and privileged access paths shall receive priority handling. High-severity findings, including overly permissive IAM roles such as AWSReservedSSO_AdministratorAccess_f51c53ac63be820d using broad administrator policies, must be reviewed immediately and remediated through least-privilege controls, compensating safeguards, or justified exception approval. The company will not rely solely on annual reviews or informal knowledge to manage vulnerabilities; instead, it will maintain an active, continuously updated remediation process.

Remediation shall be validated before a finding is considered closed. Closure requires evidence that the issue no longer exists or that compensating controls materially reduce risk to an acceptable level. Where patching or configuration correction is not immediately possible, temporary compensating controls, such as access restriction, segmentation, feature disablement, or service isolation, must be implemented and documented until permanent remediation is completed. Management must support this policy through resource allocation, accountability, and enforcement.

4. Roles and Responsibilities

  • Executive Management: Approves the policy, sets risk tolerance, ensures adequate staffing and budget for remediation activities, and escalates unresolved material risks that threaten client data protection or business continuity.
  • Security Lead / Security Owner: Owns the vulnerability management program, defines severity criteria, coordinates scanning and triage, tracks remediation progress, validates closure evidence, and prepares risk reports for management review.
  • System Owners: Own the security posture of their assigned applications, infrastructure, or services, assess findings affecting their assets, implement fixes within required timelines, and provide evidence of remediation.
  • Cloud / Platform Administrator: Remediates cloud configuration and identity findings, including IAM permissions, storage exposure, network controls, and logging settings, and ensures that changes are implemented safely and documented.
  • Application Developer / Engineering Lead: Fixes code-level vulnerabilities, dependency issues, insecure defaults, and build pipeline weaknesses, and ensures that defects are corrected in source control, tested, and deployed.
  • Endpoint / IT Administrator: Handles workstation, laptop, mobile device, and endpoint security issues, including patching, configuration hardening, malware-risk findings, and device compliance enforcement.
  • Third-Party / Vendor Owner: Reviews vulnerabilities affecting external providers or SaaS platforms, coordinates with the vendor, validates compensating controls, and escalates unresolved vendor risk when contractual or security expectations are not met.
  • All Personnel: Promptly report suspected vulnerabilities, avoid bypassing security controls, apply updates when directed, and cooperate with remediation, testing, and validation efforts.

5. Policy Requirements

  • All vulnerabilities must be logged in a centralized tracking system. Owner: Security Lead. Frequency: continuous, with each new finding entered within 2 business days. Evidence: vulnerability ticket or register entry showing asset, severity, owner, date discovered, and due date.
  • Each vulnerability must be assigned a severity and remediation deadline based on exploitability, exposure, and data sensitivity. Owner: Security Lead with System Owner input. Frequency: upon discovery and during any risk re-assessment. Evidence: triage record, severity rating, and documented due date.
  • Critical vulnerabilities affecting internet-facing systems, privileged access, or active exploit paths must be assessed immediately and remediated or mitigated within 72 hours. Owner: System Owner or Cloud / Platform Administrator. Frequency: per finding. Evidence: change record, patch confirmation, configuration diff, or mitigation record.
  • High-severity vulnerabilities must be remediated within 14 calendar days unless formally approved exception handling applies. Owner: System Owner. Frequency: per finding. Evidence: remediation ticket closure, test results, and validation screenshot or scan output.
  • Medium-severity vulnerabilities must be remediated within 30 calendar days. Owner: System Owner or Application Developer. Frequency: per finding. Evidence: fix implementation record, release note, or rescan result.
  • Low-severity vulnerabilities must be reviewed and remediated within 90 calendar days or grouped into planned maintenance if risk remains low. Owner: System Owner. Frequency: per finding or maintenance cycle. Evidence: maintenance plan, closure notes, or accepted backlog record with review date.
  • Cloud identity and access management findings must be reviewed within 1 business day and corrected to least privilege or disabled if not needed. Owner: Cloud / Platform Administrator. Frequency: continuous monitoring with daily review of high-risk findings. Evidence: IAM policy change record, access review log, and validation scan.
  • Internet-facing services, public storage, and exposed administrative interfaces must be scanned or checked after material changes and at least monthly. Owner: Security Lead with Platform Administrator. Frequency: monthly and after change. Evidence: scan reports, change tickets, and remediation follow-up records.
  • Endpoints, servers, and managed devices must receive patching and configuration remediation according to vendor release urgency and internal severity ratings. Owner: IT Administrator. Frequency: weekly review for critical patches, monthly for routine patch cycles. Evidence: patch compliance report and device inventory status.
  • Third-party vulnerabilities that affect Ligala Tech data, integrations, or access must be assessed within 5 business days of notification. Owner: Vendor Owner and Security Lead. Frequency: per notification. Evidence: vendor correspondence, risk assessment, and mitigation decision.
  • Remediation must be validated before closure through rescanning, testing, configuration review, or peer verification. Owner: Security Lead or independent reviewer not directly implementing the fix when practical. Frequency: per remediation. Evidence: validation report, rescanning output, or test results.
  • Findings that cannot be remediated by deadline must be escalated to Executive Management with a documented risk acceptance or compensating control plan. Owner: Security Lead. Frequency: before due date expiration. Evidence: exception approval, risk memo, and compensating control record.
  • Vulnerability metrics, overdue items, and repeated findings must be reviewed in management meetings. Owner: Security Lead. Frequency: at least monthly. Evidence: meeting minutes, KPI dashboard, and action items.

6. Implementation Guidance

Ligala Tech Pte should implement this policy as a lightweight but disciplined workflow that fits a small legal technology organization. The Security Lead should maintain a single vulnerability register that consolidates outputs from cloud posture tools, application scans, endpoint management, vendor alerts, and manual assessments. This register should include severity, business owner, target remediation date, validation status, and exception status. For a small team, a shared ticketing platform or security task tracker is often sufficient, provided it supports audit trails and reminders.

The company should prioritize remediation by combining technical severity with business context. For example, an exposed IAM role with broad AdministratorAccess permissions should be treated as urgent even if no exploit has been confirmed, because privileged access can create immediate blast-radius risk. Likewise, findings affecting systems that store legal matter files, identity data, or client communications should move ahead of routine hygiene issues. A practical approach is to use three priority buckets: immediate containment, scheduled remediation, and backlog with explicit review dates.

Operationally, the organization should build remediation into normal change management and release processes. Code vulnerabilities should be fixed through the engineering backlog and verified in staging before production deployment. Cloud misconfigurations should be corrected through infrastructure-as-code where possible so that secure settings are repeatable. Endpoint issues should be addressed through centralized patching and configuration management. Third-party issues should be handled by vendor outreach, contractual review, or compensating controls such as restricted access, token rotation, or segmentation until the vendor responds.

The company should also define a simple but reliable validation approach. Validation may include rescanning, checking cloud configuration states, confirming patch levels, reviewing access policies, or testing that a vulnerable feature has been disabled. When possible, the person who did not implement the fix should confirm closure to reduce confirmation bias. For a small organization, this can be done by the Security Lead or by a peer reviewer using a checklist and evidence captured in the ticket.

7. Monitoring, Evidence, and Compliance

Ligala Tech Pte shall monitor vulnerability status continuously through a combination of automated scanning, cloud security reviews, endpoint compliance reports, and manual follow-up on third-party notifications. The Security Lead shall produce a monthly status summary showing open items by severity, overdue findings, mean time to remediate, and repeat findings. Any critical or high-severity issue that remains unresolved beyond its deadline must be escalated to Executive Management immediately, with the reason for delay and the temporary risk reduction measures clearly documented.

Evidence of compliance shall be retained in a manner that supports both operational accountability and audit readiness. Acceptable evidence includes scan reports, remediation tickets, code review records, change approvals, pull request history, patch reports, cloud configuration snapshots, access review logs, vendor correspondence, and validation outputs. Evidence must be sufficient to show what was found, who owned it, what was changed, when it was changed, and how closure was validated. Records should be retained according to the company’s retention schedule and legal obligations.

Key metrics should include time to triage, time to remediate by severity, number of overdue items, percentage of findings closed within target, number of repeated findings, and number of exceptions currently active. Escalation triggers include any critical vulnerability on an internet-facing asset, any high-severity IAM exposure, repeated overdue findings from the same owner, or any issue that could plausibly expose personal data under PDPA. Where trends show insufficient remediation capacity, management must adjust priorities, staffing, or tooling to reduce risk.

8. Exceptions

Exceptions to this policy are permitted only when remediation is not immediately feasible and the residual risk is explicitly understood and accepted. Exception requests must be documented by the asset owner, reviewed by the Security Lead, and approved by Executive Management or a designated risk owner based on severity and business impact. The request must explain the technical reason for noncompliance, the compensating controls in place, the risk to data and operations, and the expected remediation date.

Each exception must have a defined expiry date, normally not exceeding 90 calendar days for high-risk issues or 180 calendar days for lower-risk issues, unless Executive Management approves a shorter or longer period based on documented justification. Expired exceptions are not automatically renewed. They must be re-reviewed, re-approved, and updated with current evidence showing why the issue still cannot be fixed. If compensating controls fail or the risk increases, the exception may be revoked at any time.

All approved exceptions shall be tracked centrally and reviewed at least monthly by the Security Lead. The review must confirm whether the business condition still exists, whether the compensating controls remain effective, and whether remediation can now proceed. Exceptions are not a substitute for fixing vulnerabilities; they are a temporary risk management mechanism only.

9. Review and Maintenance

This policy shall be reviewed at least annually and sooner when there are material changes to the threat landscape, regulatory expectations, business operations, cloud architecture, or incident history. The Security Lead is responsible for initiating the review and proposing updates, while Executive Management approves final changes. If a serious vulnerability event, audit finding, or PDPA-related issue indicates the policy is no longer adequate, an ad hoc review shall be conducted without waiting for the annual cycle.

Operational procedures supporting this policy, including scanning cadence, severity criteria, remediation workflows, and exception forms, should be maintained alongside the policy so they can evolve without weakening governance. Changes to supporting procedures must be communicated to relevant owners, including engineering, IT, and cloud administration staff. Where practical, the company should validate the effectiveness of changes through sample reviews or tabletop exercises to ensure the process remains usable for a small team.

Singapore PDPA is relevant because vulnerabilities can expose personal data held by Ligala Tech Pte for clients, users, employees, or partners. This policy supports PDPA obligations by requiring timely identification and mitigation of weaknesses that could lead to unauthorized access, data leakage, or misuse of personal information. The emphasis on least privilege, prompt remediation, logging, and evidence retention helps the organization demonstrate reasonable security arrangements.

ISO 27001 is relevant because it requires a structured information security management system with risk treatment, asset protection, access control, supplier management, and corrective action. This policy supports those expectations by defining repeatable vulnerability handling, ownership, remediation timelines, validation, and management oversight. It provides operational controls that can be mapped to ISO 27001 practices for technical vulnerability management, change control, access restriction, incident prevention, and continuous improvement.

Together, these standards reinforce the same objective: protecting sensitive legal and business information through disciplined security operations. For Ligala Tech Pte, the policy translates those standards into practical actions suitable for a small legal technology firm, ensuring that vulnerabilities are not only discovered but also prioritized and closed in a way that is defensible, measurable, and aligned with regulatory and customer expectations.

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