The greatest strategy to vulnerability prioritization lies in leveraging a data-driven approach that integrates multiple factors, including exploitability, severity, and business impact.

Companies frequently rely on the widely-used Widespread Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) to assess and prioritize vulnerabilities based on their severity. While these scores offer some insight into the potential impact of a vulnerability, they fail to consider real-world risk awareness, including the likelihood of successful exploitation. As new vulnerabilities emerge daily, groups face a daunting task: they cannot afford the time nor resources to address flaws with little impact on overall risk.

Discover the transformative power of EPSS in elevating your vulnerability assessment game: seamlessly integrating risk-based prioritization, expert judgment, and automated analysis for unparalleled effectiveness.

What’s vulnerability prioritization?

Vulnerability prioritization is the process of assessing and ranking vulnerabilities according to their potential impact on an organization’s security posture. To inform safety group decisions on prioritizing vulnerabilities, determining the necessary timeline for remediation, and deciding whether to address them at all, This course of ensures that the most critical risks are effectively mitigated before they can be exploited, thereby being an essential component.

In an ideal scenario, security teams could swiftly address each newly discovered vulnerability; unfortunately, this goal is not only unattainable but also unsustainable and environmentally unfriendly. While most organizations are capable of resolving around 10-15% of their outstanding vulnerabilities each month, it’s crucial that they prioritize effectively to achieve this goal.

Ultimately, prioritizing vulnerabilities correctly enables organizations to maximize their resources effectively. Why does this matter? Since companies can ill afford to waste capital unless it yields a tangible impact, risk management centers on guaranteeing that funds are allocated solely on initiatives that demonstrably reduce peril.

The Computer Vulnerability Exploit Severity Score (CVSS) methodology is widely adopted for vulnerability prioritization in the cybersecurity domain.

Traditionally, organizations have often prioritized vulnerabilities using a variety of approaches.

The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) assigns base scores based on specific components that remain constant across varying environments and scenarios, much like the ease with which an attacker can exploit a weakness and the potential financial gain from doing so? Components are quantified and combined to produce a final score ranging from 0 to 10, with higher scores indicative of increased severity.

The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) scores serve as a foundational benchmark, offering a universally recognized framework for evaluating the gravity of security vulnerabilities and ensuring regulatory adherence. Despite their benefits, outdated data sources have limitations that render them far less environmentally sustainable than combining them with real-time information.

While CVSS scores are crucial for assessing the severity of vulnerabilities, one significant limitation is their failure to consider the current threat landscape, including whether a weakness is being actively exploited in the wild? While a vulnerability with an excessive CVSS rating may pose a significant threat, it’s unlikely to be the most pressing issue a company must address. Take , for instance. The current CVSS rating is 5.9, classified as medium severity. While considering diverse threat intelligence sources equivalent to those mentioned earlier, one might reasonably anticipate that this vulnerability will likely be exploited within the next 30 days.

Vulnerability management requires a comprehensive approach that moves beyond simplistic scoring systems to incorporate real-time threat intelligence, thereby illuminating the true significance of prioritizing vulnerabilities based on their actual risk profiles?

Enhancing prioritization with exploit knowledge

To elevate vulnerability prioritization, organizations should migrate from relying solely on historic CVSS scores and instead consider a broader range of factors, including real-world exploitation exercises observed in the wild. A valuable resource for training is EPSS, a virtual manikin designed by …

What’s EPSS?

The EPSS provides daily estimates of the likelihood that a given vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. The mannequin assigns a score ranging from 0 to 1, representing the probability of exploitation, where higher values indicate a greater likelihood of exploitation.

The mannequin aggregates diverse vulnerability data from reputable sources like the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) list, and Exploit-DB, along with evidence of exploitation experiments. Harnessing the power of machine learning, the algorithm fine-tunes its model to uncover sophisticated relationships between relevant data variables, thereby enabling it to accurately forecast the likelihood of future exploitation.

CVSS vs EPSS

EPSS scores provide a quantifiable indicator of potential risks by combining the likelihood and impact of an identified threat or hazard, thereby facilitating data-driven decisions in prioritizing vulnerabilities.

The diagram below illustrates the scenario in which vulnerabilities with a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) rating of seven or higher are given top priority for prompt remediation. The blue circle symbolizes all vulnerabilities (CVEs) documented as of October 1, 2023. Within a 30-day window, Crimson allows users to view all identified CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) with corresponding CVSS scores that have been exploited in this timeframe.

The prevalence of exploited vulnerabilities in the wild appears to represent just a fraction of the total number of high-severity vulnerabilities, as measured by their corresponding CVSS ratings of seven or higher.

Here is the improved/revised text:

We assess a situation by ranking vulnerabilities according to an EPSS threshold of 10% to prioritize them effectively.

A stark contrast exists between the two diagrams below, with the varying sizes of blue circles highlighting the diverse array of vulnerabilities in need of prioritization. The level of endeavour necessitated by each prioritisation methodology is considered here. With a 10% EPSS threshold, the issue scope significantly narrows, resulting in fewer vulnerabilities to focus on, thereby reducing the required time and resources. By prioritizing vulnerabilities, organisations can achieve significantly enhanced effectiveness, tackling those issues with the greatest potential impact if left unaddressed.

When prioritizing vulnerabilities, organizations can more effectively align their remediation efforts by contemplating the exact nature of the threat landscape through an EPSS-driven approach. Given the rarity of exploitable vulnerabilities with low CVSS ratings, such as those denoted by EPSS, security teams may opt to prioritize these threats over others with higher CVSS scores but lower probabilities of exploitation.

Simplify vulnerability prioritization with Intruder

Is a cloud-based safety platform that empowers organizations to proactively manage their attack surface and detect potential vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. Through proactive safety surveillance, comprehensive threat assessment, and intelligent risk mitigation, Intruder enables organizations to effectively manage and simplify their cybersecurity posture against even the most significant threats.

The Intruder team is poised to release its groundbreaking vulnerability prioritization feature, fueled by the cutting-edge Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS), which harnesses the power of machine learning to accurately forecast the likelihood of a vulnerability being exploited within the next 30-day window.

With seamless access to EPSS scores within the Intruder platform, you’ll gain immediate visibility into performance metrics, empowering your team to make data-driven decisions and optimize their workflow with unparalleled precision. The proposed scores are expected to be presented in conjunction with the existing scoring system, combining CVSS ratings with input from Intruder’s team of safety experts to inform the prioritization of results intuitively.