More than 40,000 new vulnerabilities (Cves) were published in 2024 alone. More than 60% of people were labeled “high” or “significant”. Looks scary, sure, but how many of them actually put your environment at risk?
Not almost as much as you can think.
Scoring system such as CVSS severity of the flag based on technical factors. But they do not know how to rigid your network, your control, or how you have rigid major assets. This is a problem. Because without reference, teams spend too much time to pursue a scary looking insects that can already be blocked, and remember the calm people who are not.
This post breaks why traditional vulnerability priority often wanders you, and how a better approach, Exposure verificationHelps to focus on teams Is it really exploitative.
What is the problem with “important” weaknesses?
Let’s start with numbers. Last year, the revelation of vulnerability increased by 38%. And many tools, scanners, patching platforms and dashboards still sort them by score of raw CVS or EPSS.
But here is the case: These are just global scores. This means that, because a vulnerability scores 9.8 on paper, it does not mean that it has a significant effect. Yours Environment Your firewall, EDR, IPS/IDS, or division can already prevent exploitation cold. Meanwhile, the issue of that “medium” seriousness was less buried in the list? This can actually be a tick time bomb.
There is also a speed of weapons. In early 2024, the weaknesses of more than half of exploitation were converted into adventures working immediately after public disclosure. The attackers move rapidly, often can react faster than defenders. And when new weaknesses catch the headlines, many violations still come under the old defects that we already know, but have not been patched in time.
What we have here is not a search problem, this is a priority problem.
Why traditional scoring is low
Let’s break how normal systems work.
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() CVSS Gives you a severity rating based on access requirements, privileges and potential effects.
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EPSS The external predicts the possibility of exploitation using signs of danger.
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Sisa Kev The flags exploit known weaknesses.
helpful? Sure, in the words of big pictures, yes. But as many helpers are in principle, these systems do not know Your specific Environment
They cannot explain whether your IPS blocks exploitation, if the property is isolated, or if the system also matters. So they treat all networks, which can easily take on wrong improvements due to wasting time and resources. False urge,
An guess with proof.
See how picus valides your risks against actual attacks and focuses your efforts on the exposure that you really need to fix.
What is exposure verification?
The exposure flipped the verification process. Instead of estimating how bad the vulnerability can be tests Whether it is really exploitative in your real environment.
It is like running a safe, controlled attack simulation, using adverse techniques of the real world, to see if the entire Kill series of the exploitation campaign works on you. If your control stops it, great. If not, now you know what to fix.
The goal is simple: replace the beliefs with proof. In this way, you can fix weaknesses that first matters.
Technology behind it: BAS + Automatic Pentest
Exposure verification depends on two types of safe, non-destructive devices.
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Violation and attack simulation (BAS), BAS runs a continuous attack landscape using known strategy and malware behavior documented in the wild. Think them as a way of checking them whether your EDR, Siem, and firewalls are holding what they want, both against the known and emerging dangers.
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Automatic penetration test: This technique mimics an attacker’s actions, already access to your environment, test how far they can go, once they are inside. This includes attempts to reach sensitive goals such as lateral movement, privilege increase, credentials, and domain admin. It also frees your red team to focus on the paths of more complex, creative or important attacks.
Working together, these tools help your teams understand what the attackers can do In fact Do it in your network, not only what can be theoretically possible.
When CvSS score of 9.4 is not important
Let’s see how it works in behavior. A scanner says a vulnerability with a CVSS score of 9.4. It looks serious. But the exposure verification puts it in the test.
First step: Is there any public exploitation?
Yes. Evidence of concept is available. But it is not plug-end-play. It takes technical skills and certain specific conditions to be successful. This makes this vulnerability less important than appearing earlier, and is adjusted to reflect the risk. It automatically drops the score to 8.7.
Next: Can your defense stop it?
Now this is the time to check your safety stack: Cloud Control, Network Protection, Endpoint Tool and Siem Rules. If they are already detecting or blocking the attack, the risk is significantly reduced.
In this case, your violation and attack simulation solution shows that your current controls are doing their work, making the score of the vulna 6.0.
Last check: What system does it matter?
Weak assets are not important. It does not keep sensitive data and does not affect core operations. Keeping this in mind, the score falls again, this time it becomes 2.4.
In this scenario, the scanner all but shouted that it was a vulnerability with a 9.4 score and it was important that you pay some serious attention to it. However, in your real -world environment, this vuln will be blocked and detected, allowing you to deal with your organ more important weaknesses. This is the one that does the exposure verification. This distinguishes real risks from noise, allowing you to fix what matters and what does not do.
A clever way to give priority
Picus Safety Exposure Verification (Exv) Solutions The teams helps to move the previous surface-level score and focus on what is real.
We combine the surface management, violations and attack simulation of the attack, and automated painting together to see if the vulnerability can be exploited in your real environment.
It then calculates a risk score that reflects real conditions, not just the worst position perceptions. This score takes into account three major factors:
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Is vulnerability really exploitative?
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Are your current controls already blocking it?
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Does the affected system really matter to your organization and its daily operations?
Armed in this context, your teams no longer have to chase every high-seriousness warning. You get a clear, managed list of exposure that proves with very little noise for your business and its environment.
Result from field
When the teams stop relying on the Raw CVSS score and start validing the exposure, they immediately start seeing the results.
As picus, we have seen that organizations have cut them Important vulnerability count from more than half, 63 percent to only 10 percentThe same environment. The same device. The only change was verifying what exactly could be exploited.
This change protects the patching hours, cleans the noise, and most importantly is that the security teams focus more effectively on real threats and stop pursuing ghosts effectively.
Instead of flooding the workflows with hundreds of high-seriousness conclusions, the teams really have a clean, concentrated list of what matters. Passed less time to debate priorities. More time to fix real issues.
Verification turns vulnerability management into some actionable. You move rapidly, waste less, and protect what really means.
final thoughts
You do not need to fix everything. You just need to fix what is real.
The exposure verification helps teams to pursue the raw severity score and starts taking decisions based on data.
Result? Better priority, strong defense, and a more secure outfit.
learn more about Picus Safety Exposure Verification (Exv) Solutions,
Sponsored and written by Picus security,
