Greater than 40,000 new vulnerabilities (CVEs) had been revealed in 2024 alone. Greater than 60% of these had been labeled “excessive” or “vital.” Sounds scary, certain, however what number of of them truly put your surroundings in danger?
Not almost as many as you may suppose.
Scoring methods like CVSS flag severity based mostly on technical elements. However they don’t know your community, your controls, or the way you’ve hardened key belongings. That’s an issue. As a result of with out context, groups spend an excessive amount of time chasing scary-looking bugs that will already be blocked, and miss the quiet ones that aren’t.
This publish breaks down why conventional vulnerability prioritization usually leads you astray, and the way a greater strategy, publicity validation, helps groups concentrate on what’s really exploitable.
What’s the Drawback With “Crucial” Vulnerabilities?
Let’s begin with the numbers. Vulnerability disclosures jumped 38% final 12 months. And lots of instruments, scanners, patching platforms, and dashboards nonetheless type them by uncooked CVSS or EPSS scores.
However right here’s the factor: these are simply world scores. Which means, as a result of a vulnerability scores a 9.8 on paper, it doesn’t imply it has a vital influence on your surroundings. Your firewall, EDR, IPS/IDS, or segmentation may already cease the exploit chilly. In the meantime, that “medium” severity situation buried decrease on the listing? It may truly be a ticking time bomb.
There’s additionally the pace of weaponization. In early 2024, greater than half of exploited vulnerabilities had been changed into working exploits shortly after public disclosure. Attackers transfer quick, usually sooner than defenders can react. And whereas new vulnerabilities seize headlines, many breaches nonetheless come right down to older flaws we already learn about however haven’t patched in time.
What we now have right here isn’t a discovery downside, it’s a prioritization downside.
Why Conventional Scoring Falls Brief
Let’s break down how the standard methods work.
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(The) CVSS provides you a severity score based mostly on entry necessities, privileges, and potential influence.
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EPSS predicts the chance of exploitation utilizing exterior menace alerts.
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CISA KEV flags identified exploited vulnerabilities.
Useful? Certain, in big-picture phrases, sure. However as useful as they’re, in idea, these methods don’t know your particular surroundings.
They’ll’t inform in case your IPS blocks the exploit, if the asset is remoted, or if the system even issues. So that they deal with all networks the identical, which may simply result in losing time and assets on the unsuitable fixes as a consequence of a way of false urgency.
Exchange guesswork with proof.
See how Picus validates your dangers towards actual assaults and focuses your efforts on exposures you really want to repair.
What Is Publicity Validation?
Publicity Validation flips the method. As an alternative of guessing how unhealthy a vulnerability could be, it exams whether or not it’s truly exploitable in your precise surroundings.
It’s like working secure, managed assault simulations, utilizing real-world adversarial strategies, to see if the complete kill chain of the exploitation marketing campaign works on you. In case your controls cease it, nice. If not, now you recognize what to repair.
The objective is straightforward: substitute assumptions with proof. This fashion, you possibly can repair the vulnerabilities that matter essentially the most, first.
The Tech Behind It: BAS + Automated Pentests
Publicity Validation depends on two kinds of secure, non-destructive instruments.
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Breach and Assault Simulation (BAS): BAS runs steady assault eventualities utilizing identified ways and malware behaviors documented within the wild. Consider them as a strategy to examine whether or not your EDR, SIEM, and firewall are catching what they’re presupposed to, towards each identified and rising threats.
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Automated Penetration Testing: This method mimics the actions of an attacker who already has entry to your surroundings, testing how far they may go, as soon as they’re inside. This consists of lateral motion, privilege escalation, credential entry, and makes an attempt to achieve delicate targets like area admins. It additionally frees up your crimson staff to concentrate on extra complicated, artistic, or vital assault paths.
Working collectively, these instruments assist your groups perceive what attackers may actually do in your community, not simply what could be theoretically doable.
When a CVSS Rating of 9.4 Isn’t Crucial
Let’s see how this works in follow. Say a scanner flags a vulnerability with a CVSS rating of 9.4. That sounds severe. However publicity validation places it to the check.
First step: Is there a public exploit?
Sure. There’s a proof of idea out there. However it’s not plug-and-play. It takes technical talent and a few particular circumstances to succeed. That makes this vulnerability much less vital than it first seems, and the chance is adjusted to mirror that. This by itself drops the rating to eight.7.
Subsequent: Can your defenses cease it?
Now it’s time to examine your safety stack: cloud controls, community protections, endpoint instruments, and SIEM guidelines. If these are already detecting or blocking the assault, the chance drops considerably.
On this case, your breach and assault simulation answer exhibits that your current controls are doing their job, bringing the vuln’s rating down to six.0.
Final examine: Does the system matter?
The weak asset isn’t vital. It doesn’t maintain delicate knowledge and doesn’t influence core operations. With that in thoughts, the rating drops once more, this time to 2.4.
On this state of affairs, the scanner all however screamed it had a vulnerability with a 9.4 rating and it was vital that you simply pay it some severe consideration. Nevertheless, in your real-world surroundings, this vuln could be blocked and detected, letting you take care of way more vital vulnerabilities to your org. That is what publicity validation does. It differentiates the actual dangers from the noise, letting you repair what issues and transfer on from what doesn’t.
A Smarter Method to Prioritize
Picus Safety’s Publicity Validation (EXV) answer helps groups transfer previous surface-level scores and concentrate on what’s actual.
We mix assault floor administration, breach and assault simulation, and automatic pentesting collectively to see whether or not a vulnerability may be exploited in your precise surroundings.
Then it calculates a threat rating that displays actual circumstances, not simply worst-case assumptions. That rating takes into consideration three key elements:
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Is the vulnerability really exploitable?
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Are your current controls already blocking it?
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Does the affected system truly matter to your group and its every day operations?
Armed with this context, your groups now not need to chase down each high-severity alert. You get a transparent, manageable listing of exposures confirmed to matter to your small business and its surroundings with far much less noise.
Outcomes From the Area
When groups cease counting on uncooked CVSS scores and begin validating exposures, they begin seeing outcomes instantly.
As Picus, we’ve seen organizations minimize their vital vulnerability rely by greater than half, from 63 p.c to simply 10 p.c. Identical surroundings. Identical instruments. The one change was verifying what may truly be exploited.
That shift saves hours of patching, clears out the noise, and most significantly, lets safety groups extra successfully concentrate on actual threats and successfully cease chasing ghosts.
As an alternative of flooding workflows with a whole lot of high-severity findings, groups get a clear, targeted listing of what really issues. Much less time spent arguing over priorities. Extra time fixing actual points.
Validation turns vulnerability administration into one thing actionable. You progress sooner, waste much less, and defend what actually issues.
Remaining Ideas
You don’t want to repair every part. You simply want to repair what’s actual.
Publicity validation helps groups transfer previous uncooked severity scores and begin making choices based mostly on knowledge.
The consequence? Higher prioritization, stronger defenses, and a safer group.
Be taught extra about Picus Safety’s Publicity Validation (EXV) answer.
Sponsored and written by Picus Safety.
