Exposed vulnerabilities: What organizations need to know

New critical and high-risk vulnerabilities are being discovered and published every day, averaging as many as 15 per day in the first half of 2022. Some of these vulnerabilities have been exploited in the wild for years before being discovered by the security community, or before efficient security patches are made available. (Credit: gopixa/Adobe Stock)

An important component of an organization’s cybersecurity protocol is to maintain ongoing vigilance when it comes to exposed vulnerabilities. A vulnerability is a weakness or a flaw that allows a threat actor to breach at least one of the three security principles: confidentiality, integrity and availability. Once a security vulnerability is made known, developers and security teams work together to provide a fix, which is called a security patch.

New critical and high-risk vulnerabilities are being discovered and published every day, averaging as many as 15 per day in the first half of 2022. Some of these vulnerabilities have been exploited in the wild for years before being discovered by the security community, or before efficient security patches are made available. This makes it very difficult for IT and security teams to keep track and apply security patches before threat actors discover and exploit vulnerabilities. The average mean time to patch is between 60 and 150 days, yet some vulnerabilities are discovered by threat actors or exploited automatically in less than 5 minutes.