Modernizing Vulnerability Management in Today’s Threat Environment

Vulnerabilities are increasing and attackers are exploiting them quicker than traditional vulnerability management tools can keep up. In this blog learn why smarter tools are needed to help organizations focus on the risks and vulnerabilities that matter the most.

Vulnerabilities are being weaponized at record speed. In fact, a staggering 28.3 percent are exploited within just 24 hours of disclosure, which is a huge jump from four days in 2021. Even more alarming? Four out of five zero-days are exploited before vendors even know they exist.

This acceleration of time to exploit coupled with the limitations of traditional vulnerability management means security teams have to use a reactive approach to traditional patch management, which leaves the front door wide open for threat actors who aren’t waiting around.

For organizations to stay ahead, they need to implement smarter vulnerability management tools that go beyond the traditional scanning and patching and actually encourage better resilience and faster time to remediation.

So, what’s behind the rise in how fast vulnerabilities are weaponized?

The changing threat landscape
Expanding attack surface
A huge 77 percent of organizations report that the number of exploitable assets in their digital footprint has increased year-on-year, so there is no doubt this expansion is having an impact on the amount of vulnerabilities being seen.

From cloud infrastructure and SaaS apps to third-party platforms and remote endpoints – organizations are growing their libraries of digital assets and the network perimeter has all but dissolved.

The real risk isn’t just the pace of growth – it’s what gets left behind. Shadow IT is thriving and when assets go unseen or are misconfigured, IT and security teams can’t keep track. Nearly half (45%) of IT leaders admit this is a problem.

Growth in zero-day exploits
A report from Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) detailed what it describes as a four-year trend of gradual growth in zero-day exploits. For security teams, that means flying blind, giving attackers a dangerous window of opportunity to strike first. In that gap, threat actors aren’t just poking around, they’re compromising systems, stealing sensitive data, and disrupting critical services.

With zero-days on the rise, traditional and reactive security strategies are no longer enough.

Supply chain attacks
In reality, you’re only secure as your weakest vendor. Today third parties are processing more sensitive information on behalf of other organizations than ever before. This creates a blindspot in an organization’s security strategy, that threat actors love to exploit. Let’s face it, why break into one company when you can breach a vendor and compromise hundreds of targets at once?

Despite that, 60 percent of organizations do not consistently assess the security of third-party vendors and platforms.

Ultimately, a vendor’s weak security posture doesn’t just put them at risk, it puts their clients’ at risk. Without proper third-party risk management, organizations are unwittingly leaving the back door wide open.

As the threat landscape increases, traditional vulnerability management struggles to keep up, how are the limitations of legacy tools affecting security teams?

Limitations of traditional vulnerability management
While legacy tools offer a degree of protection, they were never built for the scale or complexity of today’s cyber threats. Most rely on basic scanning and patching, generating long, unprioritized lists of vulnerabilities that lack the context needed to understand which flaws pose real business risk.

This lack of prioritization isn’t just inefficient, it’s overwhelming. 65% of security professionals report alert fatigue, driven by a mass of irrelevant or low-risk vulnerabilities. As a result, teams often waste precious time patching minor issues while major vulnerabilities slip through the cracks.

Worse yet, many traditional tools struggle to even see the full picture. They were designed for static, on-prem networks and not modern attack surfaces made up of cloud workloads, IoT devices, third-party platforms, and unmanaged endpoints. That means shadow IT, misconfigured cloud assets, and off-the-grid devices often remain completely undetected.

Legacy tools typically rely on scheduled scans. Daily for critical systems, weekly or monthly for others, based on the outdated belief there’s a buffer between vulnerability disclosure and exploitation. But that assumption no longer exists. New CVEs are being weaponized in hours, not days, making even a 24-hour delay in detection a wide-open window for attackers.

Ultimately, traditional tools weren’t built for a world where the perimeter is gone, the attack surface is fluid, and threat actors move faster than ever. To keep pace, organizations need modern, intelligent vulnerability management solutions, such as our Assetnote Attack Surface Management tool, that deliver real-time visibility, risk-based prioritization, and full coverage across their entire digital footprint.

What makes vulnerability management smarter?
Despite the clear limitations of legacy vulnerability management tools, the smarter tools available are already helping security teams get ahead and not just keep up.

Threat intelligence integration
Most vulnerability tools operate in isolation, but real protection comes from knowing not just what’s vulnerable, but who’s likely to exploit it. By combining vulnerability scanning with threat intelligence, organizations gain deeper insight into attacker behavior, intent, and tactics.

Yet, only 28 percent of organizations currently use threat intelligence to prioritize vulnerabilities. That means most are still operating without understanding which vulnerabilities are being actively targeted in the wild. Smarter tools bridge that gap, giving security teams a complete view – what’s exposed, who’s targeting it, and how to respond effectively.

Contextual prioritization
The phrase “not all vulnerabilities are created equal” is still true. Context such as exploitability, business criticality, and asset exposure matters. Without it, teams waste time patching low-risk issues while high-impact vulnerabilities remain exposed.

According to Gartner, organizations that apply contextual prioritization have reduced false positives by up to 80 percent. That means less noise, fewer wasted hours, and more focus on what actually matters.

With finite resources, precision is power and contextual prioritization ensures those resources are deployed where they count most.

Continuous monitoring
Continuous vulnerability monitoring helps close the window of opportunity for attackers looking for new vulnerabilities to exploit. Attackers don’t wait for your next scheduled scan and neither should your security tools.

By implementing ongoing monitoring, organizations can protect against known threats while swiftly identifying and addressing new vulnerabilities. As a matter of fact, companies with continuous vulnerability monitoring experience 50 percent fewer successful breaches compared to those using periodic scans.

The ability to detect threats as they occur allows security teams to respond in real time, mitigating potential damage before it escalates into a more serious breach. Just as attackers work tirelessly to discover weaknesses, continuous monitoring ensures that security measures keep pace.

Attack surface visibility
You can’t protect what you can’t see. Smart vulnerability management tools help security teams to see their entire attack surface, allowing for proactive risk reduction by identifying unknown assets and misconfigurations before attackers exploit them. Having visibility of all assets improves the overall security posture of an organization, streamline vulnerability management, and allow for better incident response.

Enhance your security posture
Smarter vulnerability management tools that combine real-world threat intelligence, contextual prioritization, and increased attack surface visibility enable security teams to focus on the vulnerabilities that matter the most. By going from traditional and reactive patching to intelligence-driven remediation, organizations can not only reduce risk but also strengthen resilience against cyberattacks.