In today’s cybersecurity landscape, one question keeps CISOs and SOC managers awake at night: “With thousands of vulnerabilities disclosed every year, how do we decide which ones to patch first?”
It’s a question without a simple answer — because no organisation, regardless of size, can patch everything. Even Fortune 500 companies with mature vulnerability management programs find themselves buried under the constant flood of new CVEs.
Traditional methods of prioritisation — especially those relying solely on CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) — are no longer enough. They measure technical severity but fail to capture the context: Is the vulnerability being exploited? Is it likely to be exploited soon? What’s the real-world impact on our environment?
This gap between theoretical risk and real exploitation has given rise to a smarter, more adaptive approach: Vulnerability Management Chaining (VMC).
The Challenge: Why Traditional Models Fail
The scale and complexity of modern vulnerability management are overwhelming:
- Volume Overload: Over 16,000 new CVEs are reported every year. Patching all of them isn’t just impractical — it’s impossible.
- False Priorities: Many vulnerabilities labelled “critical” by CVSS are never weaponised or actively exploited.
- Patch Fatigue: Security teams spend countless hours chasing vulnerabilities that pose minimal real-world risk, leading to burnout and wasted effort.
The outcome? Organisations appear patched on paper — yet remain exposed to the vulnerabilities that truly matter.
The Vulnerability Management Chaining Framework
Vulnerability Management Chaining (VMC) introduces a more intelligent prioritisation model by integrating three critical data sources into a single, contextualised decision engine:
1. KEV – Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalogue Maintained by CISA, the KEV Catalogue identifies vulnerabilities that are confirmed to be exploited in the wild. These are your immediate priorities — because attackers are already leveraging them in active attacks.
2. EPSS – Exploit Prediction Scoring System Developed by the FIRST organisation, EPSS uses data science and machine learning to estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited within the next 30 days. It’s a predictive lens into what attackers might target next, helping security teams stay a step ahead.
3. CVSS – Common Vulnerability Scoring System CVSS still plays an essential role in assessing technical severity and business impact. It answers the “how bad could this be if exploited?” question — helping to contextualise risks within the organisation’s infrastructure.
The Power of Chaining
When these three models are chained together, they create a contextual risk hierarchy that transforms how patching decisions are made.
- KEV answers: What’s actively being exploited right now? This represents immediate threats that demand urgent attention.
- EPSS answers: What’s likely to be exploited soon? This predictive layer allows proactive defence before exploitation begins.
- CVSS answers: If exploited, what’s the potential business impact? This ensures the organisation understands the potential damage and aligns patching with business priorities.
By linking these three perspectives, security teams can move from reactive patching to strategic vulnerability management. This chained logic builds a tiered prioritisation pipeline that filters out noise and surfaces the vulnerabilities that truly matter — those most likely to cause real damage in your environment.
The Data Speaks
Research and field testing show just how effective this approach can be. Using CVSS alone, an organisation may need to address around 15,000 to 16,000 vulnerabilities annually. Using VMC, that number drops to around 800 to 900 vulnerabilities — an 18x improvement in efficiency, while still maintaining 85–90% coverage of real-world threats.
The result is a vulnerability management process that’s smarter, leaner, and far more impactful — without sacrificing security posture.
Why It Matters for CISOs and Security Leaders
The benefits of Vulnerability Management Chaining go far beyond technical efficiency. It’s a strategic enabler for business-aligned security.
- Better ROI: Security budgets are limited. VMC ensures that time and money are spent reducing actual risk, not chasing theoretical scores.
- Operational Efficiency: SOC and vulnerability management teams can work with focus — addressing what truly matters first.
- Improved Risk Communication: CISOs can now demonstrate measurable progress using KEV- and EPSS-backed data to show risk reduction to executive boards.
- Future-Ready Defence: As cloud, IoT, and supply chain dependencies expand, VMC provides a scalable model that adapts to evolving attack surfaces.
In short, VMC transforms patching from a numbers game into a risk-based strategy.
What’s Next for Vulnerability Management
The industry is already moving toward intelligence-driven vulnerability management, and VMC is at the forefront of that shift.
We’re entering an era where the old mindset of “patch everything” is being replaced by a smarter approach — “patch what matters most, first.”
As attack surfaces grow and resources remain constrained, Vulnerability Management Chaining could soon become the gold standard for enterprise patching strategies.
Because in cybersecurity, speed and focus are everything.
Final Thought
VMC isn’t just a framework — it’s a mindset shift toward smarter defence. By combining exploit intelligence, predictive analytics, and impact assessment, it helps organisations cut through the noise and act where it counts most.
The real question now is: Are organisations ready to adopt this model — or will patching remain a numbers game for most companies?
