How to prioritize vulnerabilities based on risk

Vulnerability counting is an ineffective method for evaluating cybersecurity risk as it doesn't account for factors like exploitability, business impact, and data sensitivity. Risk-based prioritization is a superior approach that assesses the actual risk posed by each vulnerability. This method reduces alert fatigue, drives greater collaboration between teams, and helps direct limited resources to counter the threats that would cause the most harm. To implement risk-based prioritization, organizations should gain comprehensive visibility of their application environment, incorporate business context, analyze security testing results, evaluate runtime risk signals, develop a risk-scoring model, establish prioritization criteria, and continuously refine the approach.