From Vulnerability Management to Preemptive Exposure Management
The traditional model of vulnerability management—“scan, wait, patch”—was built for an earlier era, but today’s attackers operate at machine speed, exploiting weaknesses within hours of disclosure through automation and AI-driven reconnaissance. The challenge is no longer about identifying vulnerabilities but fixing them quickly enough to stay ahead. While organizations discover thousands of exposures every month, only a fraction are remediated before adversaries take advantage.
Roi Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Vicarius, describes the answer as “preemptive exposure management,” a strategy that anticipates and neutralizes threats before they can be weaponized. “Preemptive exposure management shifts the model entirely,” he explains. “It means anticipating and neutralizing threats before they’re weaponized, not waiting for a CVE to be exploited before taking action.” This proactive model requires continuous visibility of assets, contextual scoring to highlight the most critical risks, and automation that compresses remediation timelines from weeks to minutes.
Michelle Abraham, research director for security and trust at IDC, notes the urgency of this shift. “Proactive security seems to have taken a back seat to reactive security at many organizations. IDC research highlights that few organizations track all their IT assets which is the critical first step towards visibility of the full digital estate. Once assets and exposures are identified, security teams are often overwhelmed by the volume of findings, underscoring the need for risk-based prioritization,” she says. Traditional severity scores such as CVSS do not account for real-world exploitability or the value of affected systems, which means organizations often miss what matters most. Cohen stresses that blending exploit intelligence, asset criticality, and business impact is essential to distinguish noise from genuine risk.
Abraham further points out that less than half of organizations currently use exposure prioritization algorithms, and siloed operations between security and IT create costly delays. “By integrating visibility, prioritization and remediation, organizations can streamline processes, reduce patching delays and fortify their defenses against evolving threats,” she explains.
Artificial intelligence adds another layer of complexity. Attackers are already using AI to scale phishing campaigns, evolve malware, and rapidly identify weaknesses, but defenders can also leverage AI to automate detection, intelligently prioritize threats, and generate remediation playbooks in real time. Cohen highlights its importance: “In a threat landscape that moves faster than any analyst can, remediation has to be autonomous, contextual and immediate and that’s what preemptive strategy delivers.”
Not everyone, however, is convinced. Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst at IT-Harvest, takes a more skeptical stance: “Most organizations have mature vulnerability management programs that have identified problems in critical systems that are years old. There is always some reason not to patch or otherwise fix a vulnerability. Sprinkling AI pixie dust on the problem will not make it go away. Even the best AI vulnerability discovery and remediation solution cannot overcome corporate lethargy.” His concerns highlight that culture and organizational behavior remain as critical as the technology itself.
Even with automation, trust issues persist. A single poorly executed patch can disrupt mission-critical operations, leading experts to recommend gradual adoption. Much like onboarding a new team member, automation should begin with low-risk actions, operate with guardrails, and build confidence over time as results prove consistent and reliable. Lawrence Pingree of Dispersive emphasizes prevention: “We have to be more preemptive in all activities, this even means the way that vendors build their backend signatures and systems to deliver prevention. Detection and response is failing us and we're being shot behind the line.”
Regulatory expectations are also evolving. Frameworks such as NIST CSF 2.0 and ISO 27001 increasingly measure how quickly vulnerabilities are remediated, not just whether they are logged. Compliance is becoming less about checklists and more about demonstrating speed and effectiveness with evidence to support it.
Experts broadly agree on what needs to change: unify detection, prioritization, and remediation workflows; automate obvious fixes while maintaining safeguards; prioritize vulnerabilities based on exploitability, asset value, and business impact; and apply runtime protections to reduce exposure during patching delays. Cohen sums it up directly: security teams don’t need to find more vulnerabilities—they need to shorten the gap between detection and mitigation. With attackers accelerating at machine speed, the only sustainable path forward is a preemptive strategy that blends automation, context, and human judgment.
