The volume of common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) identified has now reached a level that even the organization tasked with managing them can no longer keep up. The National Vulnerability Database (NVD) announced in February 2024 that it would no longer provide common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) scores for all CVEs.
This decision was down to resource constraints and an inability to keep up with the volume of newly-disclosed vulnerabilities. The NVD has now shifted its focus to processing vulnerabilities more efficiently by relying on vendor-provided and third-party scores rather than scoring each CVE independently.
The Growing Vulnerability Challenge
In 2024, there were over 40,000 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) published, which is a 38% increase from 2023. All of this is before organisations begin looking at other non-CVE vulnerabilities (configuration issues, outdated systems, elevated privileges etc) that can be just as important as vulnerabilities that do have a CVE. Even the NVD is saying that a new approach to vulnerability management is required.
The Limits of Traditional Risk-Based Vulnerability Management
A key component of Risk Based Vulnerability Management (RBVM) is prioritization. Prioritizing vulnerabilities based on their calculated risk scores, then focusing on addressing or remediating the highest-risk vulnerabilities first.
However, in the high volume vulnerability landscape we face today, security teams are often faced with multiple vulnerabilities with similar high priority risk scores? What do you tackle first?
Many organizations, including Rapid7, are addressing this issue by adding more context when calculating risk score including the use of AI. But still the challenge remains, what do you prioritize first if vulnerabilities have the same risk score?
Introducing Remediation Hub: A Solution First Approach
That’s where Remediation Hub can help. Rapid7’s Remediation Hub takes a remediation-based view rather than an individual CVE based view of vulnerability management. It shows security teams the volume of vulnerabilities that will be resolved by carrying out a recommended remediation. This allows security teams to carry out bulk vulnerability removal by selecting a recommended remediation.
Recommended remediations are still prioritized based on risk, specifically a group risk score that considers:
- The number of vulnerabilities that will be resolved.
- The criticality of the vulnerabilities.
- The number of assets impacted and their exploitability.
Rather than simply focusing on remediating a single CVE with the highest risk, security teams are instead guided to focus their work where it will be most effective, deliver the biggest impact on overall risk and thus drive improvement to employee productivity.
Unifying Security Operations with Exposure Command
Remediation Hub is a foundational component of the Exposure Command cybersecurity platform. Within the Exposure Command platform, Remediation Hub acts as a centralised location for all remediation efforts and is tightly integrated with the various platform components.
Via integration between Surface Command, Rapid7’s attack surface management (ASM) platform, and Remediation Hub, users can now see recommended remediations when viewing an individual asset or the asset inventory. Within the Remediation Hub itself users can drill down to obtain information and more context on the assets impacted by carrying out a specific remediation.
Security teams can see concrete vulnerability evidence or proof before assigning fixes to remediation teams and can export a prioritized list of solutions for streamlined remediation. This tight integration improves employee productivity and accelerates mean-time-to-remediate (MTTR), eliminating the need to jump between tools to obtain more context.
How the Rapid7 Remediation Hub Works
Remediation Hub ingests vulnerability data from both customer cloud and on-prem landscapes. Rather than presenting security professionals with a long list of vulnerabilities identified across their attack surface, Remediation Hub provides users with a list of recommended remediations that are prioritized based on an algorithm-driven risk score. Security employees are thus guided to where they can have the most impact in reducing overall risk.
Working Smarter in Vulnerability Management
Due to the extent, complexity and dynamic nature of today's IT networks, it’s clear that a new approach to managing vulnerabilities is required. The focus for cybersecurity platforms like Rapid7 Exposure Command is no longer on just identifying and prioritizing vulnerabilities but on what you do with them. We need to help security teams cut through the noise, to intelligently manage vulnerabilities and focus on where they can be most effective and productive.
Security teams carrying out remediation must start working smarter not harder.
For more information on Remediation Hub:
Source: Rapid7
Source Link: https://blog.rapid7.com/2025/04/01/a-new-approach-to-managing-vulnerabilities-is-required-work-smarter-not-harder-with-rapid7-remediation-hub/