As the threat landscape evolves, so must the methods and tools to safeguard critical digital assets. Traditional vulnerability management programs that were once considered the gold standard are starting to show limitations in their ability to address complex cyber risks, leaving teams to manually triage long lists of potential vulnerabilities.

That’s why organizations are increasingly turning towards Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (RBVM). But what is RBVM, and how does it differ from traditional methods? We’ll talk through traditional vulnerability management vs risk management strategies, weighing up the pros and cons to help you understand how they differ and which offers the most robust protection.

The problems with traditional vulnerability management

Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report reported a 34% jump in vulnerability exploitation since 2024, with the average patch time taking 209 days. The traditional approach to vulnerability management is leaving teams overwhelmed by thousands of contextless scan results, unable to identify the most pressing vulnerabilities while trying (and often failing) to fix everything.

Gone are the days when organizations could rely solely on Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) scores to prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities. While this conventional method was once the go-to strategy, it has become increasingly apparent that it carries significant drawbacks:

• Reliance on CVSS scores: Traditional vulnerability management relies heavily on Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) scores, which may not accurately reflect the real-world risk posed by a vulnerability to a particular business.
• Lack of threat context: Traditional approaches often overlook the broader threat landscape, making it difficult to identify and prioritize the most critical risks.
• Manual triaging: Without proper prioritization, organizations may need to manually triage all vulnerabilities, leading to increased time and resource consumption.
• Inadequate focus on business impact: Traditional vulnerability management fails to provide quantifiable data on the potential business impact of vulnerabilities, resulting in inefficient remediation efforts.
• Remediation of low-risk vulnerabilities: Organizations using traditional approaches may end up wasting time remediating vulnerabilities that pose little to no risk, while higher-risk vulnerabilities may go unaddressed.
• Reactive rather than proactive: Traditional vulnerability management often focuses on addressing existing vulnerabilities rather than proactively identifying and mitigating potential threats.

What is Risk-Based Vulnerability Management?

Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (RBVM) is a strategic and innovative approach that focuses on identifying, prioritizing, and addressing vulnerabilities in the context of an organization’s systems and applications, considering the potential impact on the business. By considering the broader threat landscape, real-world risk factors, and potential business impact, this strategy empowers organizations to proactively tackle cyber threats and optimize resource allocation within the organizational context.

With its emphasis on continuous monitoring, context-aware prioritization, and integration with predictive threat intelligence, the risk-based approach ensures that the most business-critical risks are addressed first, ultimately decreasing the likelihood of a cyber-attack and minimizing potential damage.

Risk-based Vulnerability Management approaches are more holistic than traditional techniques, considering both known and unknown vulnerabilities within a particular system. This approach focuses on prioritizing security initiatives based on their potential impact on critical assets, as well as the likelihood of exploitation. This allows organizations to focus their limited resources on mitigation efforts that are most likely to result in a breach.

Benefits of Risk-Based Vulnerability Management

Managing vulnerabilities based on risk offers several benefits over the traditional model, allowing organizations to protect themselves from cyber-attacks.

• Focus on business impact: Prioritizing vulnerabilities based on their potential impact on an organization’s systems and applications ensures that the most critical risks are addressed first.
• Proactive threat management: Understanding the risks posed by vulnerabilities, and taking a proactive approach to manage them, reduces the likelihood of a cyber-attack.
• Improved efficiency: Streamlining the vulnerability management process helps allocate resources more effectively and reduces time spent on low-risk vulnerabilities.
• Context-aware prioritization: Considering the broader threat landscape allows organizations to identify and prioritize vulnerabilities based on real-world risk factors.
• Integration with threat intelligence: Incorporating predictive threat intelligence enhances the accuracy of vulnerability detection and prioritization.
• Continuous monitoring: Identifying vulnerabilities in real time allows for more efficient remediation and reduces the risk of successful attacks.

In response to the growing need for a more proactive and efficient way to manage vulnerabilities in the real-world context, risk-based approaches to vulnerability management have emerged as a powerful alternative, providing a more comprehensive and effective defense against the ever-increasing sophistication of cyber threats.

Key differences in traditional vs risk-based vulnerability management

Feature	Traditional vulnerability management	Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (RBVM)
Primary focus	Identifying and patching as many vulnerabilities as possible, usually based on severity scores.	Identifying, prioritizing, and remediating vulnerabilities based on actual business risk.
Prioritization	Primarily relies on technical severity scores (e.g. CVSS scores), treating all high-severity vulnerabilities equally.	Prioritization based on real-world risk from threat intelligence, combining asset criticality, exploitability, threat context, and business impact.
Context	Often lacks business context; treats all systems and vulnerabilities uniformly.	Integrates business context; understands the importance of assets and their relevance to business operations.
Resource allocation	Can lead to wasted effort on low-risk vulnerabilities due to “patch everything” mentality.	Optimizes resource allocation by focusing on the most critical risks, improving efficiency.
Approach	Reactive; focuses on addressing existing vulnerabilities after they are discovered.	Proactive and strategic; anticipates and addresses potential threats before they are exploited.
Threat intelligence integration	Rarely integrates real-time threat intelligence; relies on static vulnerability databases.	Incorporates real-time threat intelligence, exploit availability, and attacker capabilities to prioritize.
Visibility	Provides point-in-time snapshots of vulnerability data.	Facilitates continuous and dynamic visibility into assets and vulnerabilities across the entire attack surface.
Automation	Often involves more manual processes for analysis and prioritization.	Embraces automation for vulnerability detection, assessment, and prioritization, improving efficiency.
Benefits	Basic identification of known vulnerabilities, meets minimum compliance requirements.	Reduced overall risk, faster response times, improved visibility, operational efficiency, better decision-making, better alignment with real threats, enhanced confidence in security posture.

Outpost24’s risk-based approach: Outscan NX

The conventional approach to vulnerability management that heavily relies on CVSS scores falls short in supplying clear, quantifiable data on the potential business impact of security threats. As a result, cyber security teams invest precious time and resources to address low-risk vulnerabilities, inadvertently neglecting the high-risk threats that truly demand attention.

Organizations can proactively address risks and reduce the likelihood of a cyber-attack by shifting focus toward the business implications and prioritizing vulnerabilities accordingly. With Outpost24’s Risk-Based Vulnerability Management solution, Outscan NX, businesses can leverage predictive threat intelligence technology and continuous monitoring to stay ahead of the curve and ensure a robust cybersecurity stance.

Outscan NX incorporates cutting-edge predictive threat intelligence technology, which boosts the precision of vulnerability detection and streamlines prioritization, keeping your organization one step ahead.

Discover how OutscanNX can help you reduce risk, streamline compliance, and take proactive measures to prevent a breach. Request a free demo of Outpost24’s OutscanNX and see how it can help enhance your security posture today.