Transform Vulnerability Management: How Critical Start & Qualys Reduce Cyber Risk

In a recent webinar co-hosted by Qualys and Critical Start, experts from both organizations discussed the critical need for transforming vulnerability management strategies to effectively combat today’s evolving cyber threats. This article distills key insights from that session, exploring how traditional vulnerability scoring methods fall short and how a risk-based approach, powered by Qualys’ TruRisk and Critical Start’s managed services, can dramatically reduce cyber risk and operational burden.

Why Vulnerability Management Needs to Change

Security teams face a seemingly overwhelming number of vulnerabilities, making it nearly impossible to patch them all. Attackers take advantage of this reality, targeting known, unpatched vulnerabilities to breach organizations.

As John Delattery, Senior Partner Solution Architect at Qualys, put it:“Reducing cyber risk is hard. In fact, when we look at the most commonly exploited vulnerabilities, we see that attackers are continuing to target old, unpatched vulnerabilities.”

The numbers tell the full story: “The average time to remediate a vulnerability is 30.6 days, but the average time to weaponize an attack is only 19 1/2 days. That gives threat actors an 11-day advantage to attack your unpatched vulnerabilities — 11 days where you’re leaving the front door to your house wide open.”

The reality is clear — prioritizing vulnerabilities effectively is just as critical as detecting them.

The Pitfalls of CVSS Scoring

Most security teams rely on CVSS scoring to rank vulnerabilities, but this method has serious flaws. It often misrepresents risk by flagging too many issues as “high” or “critical,” overwhelming teams with alerts that don’t reduce real-world cyber risk.

“When it comes to CVSS-based scoring, their limitations include, but are not limited to, the fact that security teams end up focusing on inconsequential vulnerabilities that don’t necessarily reduce overall risk,” Delattery explained.

The real issue?

“More than half of all CVEs scored by CVSS are critical or high severity. But as you all know, if everything is important, then nothing truly is.”

Without the right approach, teams spend time patching vulnerabilities that pose little risk while missing the ones that truly matter.

A Better Approach: TruRisk by Qualys

To cut through the noise, Qualys developed TruRisk, a risk-based prioritization framework that helps security teams focus on the vulnerabilities that are most likely to be exploited.

“What we discovered was that of all the known CVEs going back to 1999, only 2.5% of them actually contribute to the most risk. These are the vulnerabilities that have weaponized exploit code, or your CISA KEVs, or those exploited by malware, ransomware, or your threat actors.”

By shifting from volume-based patching to risk-driven remediation, organizations can significantly reduce the number of vulnerabilities they need to address while improving security.

“Using Qualys TruRisk, we can reduce the number of prioritized vulnerabilities from 52% to just 7% on average. That’s a reduction of up to 85% fewer vulnerabilities to prioritize for patching or remediation—while still focusing on the risks that actually contribute the most risk to your organization.”

The Three Pillars of Effective Vulnerability Management

To reduce risk effectively, security teams need three critical components:

• Asset Management (CSAM): Reducing cyber risk starts with knowing your assets. With CSAM, you can discover and monitor entire attack surfaces to accelerate incident triage and remediation workflows.
  
• Vulnerability Management (VMDR): We help you visualize and measure cybersecurity risk and present it in meaningful ways to audiences from your CISOs to IT teams, and help you proactively reduce risk and track reduction over time.
  
• Remediation (TruRisk Eliminate): Not only the risk-based vulnerability management or prioritization with the capabilities that Qualys gives and unique for Critical Start, but how do you separate and communicate those remediations to the right teams.

How Critical Start Delivers Operational Success

A great tool is only part of the solution. Without the right implementation, even the best vulnerability management platform won’t deliver its full value. That’s where Critical Start managed services come in.

“Our vulnerability managed service is a fully managed service of the Qualys deployment in your environment,” said Chris Carlson, Chief Product Officer at Critical Start. “Where Critical Start comes in is the process and the 24/7 operation to make sure it’s set up correctly at implementation, make sure it’s configured correctly and operational monitoring on an ongoing basis.”

By handling everything from initial deployment to ongoing tuning and continuous monitoring, Critical Start ensures Qualys customers get the best possible results.

The Ransomware Reality: Why Prioritization Matters

One of the most eye-opening insights from the webinar was the impact of proper vulnerability prioritization on ransomware risk:

“I took some data from Critical Start’s customers … across these 10 customers, 32% of assets in their environment had vulnerabilities that ransomware actors are targeting.”

The real kicker? Fixing those vulnerabilities doesn’t require patching thousands of CVEs.

“When you look in detail at those vulnerabilities and the patches, there’s really only 13 patches that handle all of them. And for most of them, there’s only two or three that you can deploy to handle all of it.”

With a targeted approach, organizations can drastically reduce their ransomware exposure with just a handful of well-chosen patches.

Why an MDR-Driven Approach Works

Security teams don’t just need better tools, they need a strategy that aligns with their operational needs. That’s where the partnership between Qualys and Critical Start makes a difference.

“That’s why for us at Critical Start, the reactive capabilities of managed detection and response, plus the proactive capabilities of our vulnerability management with Qualys, becomes a powerful combination.”

By pairing Qualys’ industry-leading vulnerability management with Critical Start 24/7/365 monitoring, security teams can:

• Eliminate security blind spots
• Reduce attacker dwell time
• Improve response speed with expert-led investigations
• Reduce the administrative burden on internal teams

Take Action: Reduce Your Risk Today

With the right tools and a managed service approach, your security team can stay ahead of threats while reducing operational friction.

Ready to transform your vulnerability management program? Get in touch to see how the combined power of Critical Start and Qualys can help you significantly reduce your exposure to cyber threats

Watch The Webinar