CISA Releases SSVC Methodology to Prioritize Vulnerabilities

Today CISA published its guide on Stakeholder-Specific Vulnerability Categorization (SSVC), a vulnerability management methodology that assesses vulnerabilities and prioritizes remediation efforts based on exploitation status, impacts to safety, and prevalence of the affected product in a singular system.

As stated in Executive Assistant Director (EAD) Eric Goldstein's blog post Transforming the Vulnerability Management Landscape, implementing a methodology, such as SSVC, is a critical step to advancing the vulnerability management ecosystem. Additionally, the blog details advances—including

CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, Common Security Advisory Framework (CSAF) machine-readable security advisories, and the Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange (VEX)—that, used in conjunction with SSVC, will reduce the window cyber threat actors have to exploit networks.

CISA encourages organizations to read EAD Goldstein's blog post and to use the following resources on the SSVC webpage to strengthen their vulnerability management processes:

• CISA's SSVC decision tree
• SSVC Guide on using SSVC and the SSVC decision tree
• SSVC Calculator for prioritizing vulnerability responses in an organization’s respective environment