NetSPI Reveals Urgency for Enhanced Vulnerability Prioritization

NetSPI, a provider of offensive security solutions, released its 2023 Offensive Security Vision Report highlighting vulnerability trends in applications, cloud, and networks.

It analyzed over 300,000 anonymized findings from numerous pentest engagements and identified prevalent vulnerabilities across industries like healthcare, retail, finance, and manufacturing.

The findings are meant to help security and business leaders to prioritize discovery, management, and remediation efforts. 

"This report makes it abundantly clear that there's still a lot to be done to support and enable the industry to improve vulnerability management," said Cody Chamberlain, Head of Product at NetSPI. "We hope the observations and actionable recommendations throughout our inaugural Offensive Security Vision Report are a great data-driven starting point for security teams to harden their security."

The report revealed that the government and nonprofit industry had the most critical and high severity vulnerabilities, while the insurance industry had the least. It also found that internal networks have three times the number of exploitable vulnerabilities compared to external networks and that web applications had a higher occurrence of high and critical vulnerabilities compared to mobile and thick applications.

Standing in the way of combating these issues once and for all are 2 barriers the report uncovered: lack of resources (70%) and prioritization (60%).

"One narrative made evident from our Offensive Security Vision Report is that vulnerability prioritization is critical," said Vinay Anand, Chief Product Officer at NetSPI. "The reality is that we cannot fix every vulnerability discovered, but if prioritization and support continue to lack, the security industry will fall short. This realization, coupled with the industry experiencing rising burnout rates among developer teams, should evoke a sense of urgency. Our findings can help leaders grasp the severity of the situation to prioritize vulnerability management."