Resource 2025-08 7 min
Vulnerability prioritization: reachability beats raw CVSS
A practical prioritization model that focuses on exploitability, reachable attack paths, and business impact.
Vulnerability management Risk Prioritization
Why CVSS alone fails
CVSS is useful—but it doesn’t capture whether a vulnerability is reachable in your environment, or whether compensating controls reduce risk.
A better triage model
Score each finding on:
- Reachability: is the service reachable from untrusted networks or lateral paths?
- Exploitability: known exploits, KEV, active exploitation signals
- Impact: data exposure, privilege escalation potential, business criticality
- Control coverage: MFA, segmentation, EDR, application controls
What this produces
A remediation backlog that:
- is owned
- is measurable
- reduces real exposure first
Quick actions
- Document ownership boundaries.
- Stage changes and verify outcomes.
- Measure and report monthly.
Want help implementing?
We can translate these controls into a staged plan with verification steps for your environment.