Patchy patch mamagement?

Edgescan has published the findings of its 2022 Vulnerability Statistics Report, which for the 7th year running offers a comprehensive view of the state of vulnerability management globally. This year’s report takes a more granular look at the trends by industry, and provides details on which of the known, patchable vulnerabilities are currently being exploited by threat actors.

Tuesday, 8th March 2022 Posted 2 years ago in by Phil Alsop

The report reveals that organizations are still taking nearly two months to remediate critical risk vulnerabilities, with the average mean time to remediate (MTTR) across the full stack set at 60 days.

Edgescan found high rates of “known” (i.e. patchable) vulnerabilities that have working exploits in the wild. 57% of all the vulnerabilities are more than two years old, with as many as 17% being more than five years old. Edgescan also observed a concerning 1.5% of known, unpatched vulnerabilities that are over 20 years old, dating back to 1999.

Remote access exposures across the attack surface are a worrying trend and accounted for 5% of total attack surface exposures in 2021.

While the size of an organization bears little weight on MTTR, Edgescan observed significant differences across industries. Healthcare organizations (NAICS 62) - despite the extreme pressure they endured in the past two years - came out on top, with an MTTR of just 44 days. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the public administration sector (NAICS 92) took an average of 92 days to remediate known vulnerabilities - a month longer than the cross-industry average.

“We are delighted to be able to share our intelligence with the wider security community for the 7th year running”, said Eoin Keary, CEO and co-founder of Edgescan. “Patching and maintenance are still a challenge, and so is detection. Attack surface management and visibility is paramount, and with our report we aim to inform enterprises of the most common exposures”