In an increasingly volatile cyber threat landscape, timely remediation of vulnerabilities is more crucial than ever. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) introduced the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog in 2021, aiming to spotlight vulnerabilities actively exploited in the wild, thereby guiding federal agencies and enterprises towards prioritizing their cyber defense strategies.
Recent updates from CISA reveal that the KEV list has significantly sped up the remediation process, particularly for critical and high-severity vulnerabilities. Federal agencies have seen a decrease of 72% in KEVs exposed for 45 days or more, indicating an enhanced patching pace where critical KEVs are remediated nine days faster on average than their non-KEV counterparts. For internet-facing issues, the improvement is even more pronounced, with remediation occurring 36 days faster.
Challenges in Remediation Timeliness
The urgency of remediation varies widely among sectors. While federal agencies generally outpace other sectors, remediating 65% faster thanks to strict CISA deadlines, the private sector, especially non-profits and NGOs, lag considerably. This disparity highlights a significant gap in vulnerability management practices across different sectors.
Moreover, vulnerabilities linked to ransomware have seen the fastest remediation times. However, as Mike Walters, President and Co-Founder of Action1, points out, “Despite the widespread understanding that unpatched vulnerabilities commonly lead to attacks, many organizations are still unaware of their susceptibility to known vulnerabilities. This awareness gap exposes us to increasing risks and warrants greater attention, particularly as the potential damage from cyber-attacks escalates with the growing integration of technology into our lives.” This gap underscores the critical need for enhancements like those that have just been introduced in the Action1 Platform.
Integrating CISA’s KEV Catalog: A Game-Changing Update
Understanding the critical nature of these vulnerabilities, we are excited to announce a significant update to the Action1 Platform: the integration with CISA’s KEV catalog. With this new feature, vulnerabilities listed in the KEV catalog will now display a new attribute indicating whether they are known to be actively exploited. This enhancement is designed to give our users a clear and immediate understanding of the threat level, thereby prioritizing remediation efforts effectively.
Prioritizing Security in Business Discussions
As the cybersecurity landscape evolves, it becomes increasingly important to elevate the discussion of KEVs to the highest levels of business. The latest update to the Action1 platform—the integrated real-time vulnerability discovery and patch management automation solution—supports this directive by enabling more informed decision-making at the board level, ensuring that security postures are not only reactive but preemptively fortified.
While the KEV list has proven to be a valuable resource in expediting vulnerability remediation, this new integration takes it a step further, embedding these insights directly into your security operations. We encourage all our users to leverage this new feature, ensuring that your systems are safeguarded against known threats with the urgency they demand.
Furthermore, the Action1 Platform now offers a free initial vulnerability assessment for an unlimited number of endpoints. There are no hidden fees; as soon as an Action1 agent is installed, it performs a full analysis, sends all vulnerability data to Action1, and then becomes inactive. This allows you to perform an initial assessment of your endpoint security posture at no cost.
First 100 endpoints are free with no feature limitations.
