Every day, your team is flooded with alerts about newly discovered weaknesses across your systems. Cloud servers, employee laptops, mobile devices, IoT sensors—each one represents a potential entry point for attackers who are more than happy to exploit any weakness they find. This is where CVE can help.
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) creates a shared language that cuts through the chaos. Instead of vague descriptions or different teams using different names for the same problem, CVE gives each vulnerability a unique identifier (like CVE-2023-1234) that everyone recognizes.
The stakes couldn’t be higher in 2025. For many small and mid-sized companies, a single ransomware attack could mean game over. We’ve watched plenty organizations struggle to recover after attacks that exploited vulnerabilities that were known, documented, and should have been patched months earlier.
Used right, CVE connects everything you do in security:
- Your vulnerability scanner finds a weakness and labels it with a CVE ID.
- Your threat intelligence platform uses that same ID to tell you how hackers are exploiting it in the wild.
- Your patch management system references the same ID when deploying the fix.
But without this common CVE reference point, your security tools would be like emergency responders using different maps to reach the same incident.
Below, we’ll show you everything you need to know about CVE to build security programs that actually work (even when facking attackers with plenty of time, resources, and motivation).
What Is CVE?
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) is a standardized identification system for publicly known cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Each CVE entry includes an identification number, a description, and at least one public reference, creating a common language for security professionals to communicate about specific security issues.
When researchers discover a vulnerability (whether it’s a buffer overflow in a popular web server or a logic flaw in an authentication system), they work with MITRE (the organization that manages CVE) to assign it a unique identifier. This identifier, structured as “CVE-YYYY-NNNNN,” becomes the standard reference point for that specific weakness.
In the CVE system, a vulnerability is a mistake in software code or system configuration that can be directly used by an attacker to gain unauthorized access or perform unauthorized actions. These are distinct from “exposures,” which are security issues that don’t directly enable attacks but might provide information or capabilities that help attackers.
For example, CVE-2023-48795 (also known as the “Terrapin Attack”) identified a weakness in SSH protocol implementations that could allow attackers to downgrade the encryption used in SSH connections. The CVE entry provides essential details: affected systems, technical mechanisms, potential impact, and references to more detailed analysis.
The CVE system doesn’t try to describe everything about a vulnerability. It’s intentionally limited to core information: a unique identifier, basic description, references, and affected products. This streamlined approach keeps the system manageable while providing enough information for security teams to understand if they’re affected.
CVE vs. CVSS
Many people confuse CVE with CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System), but they serve different purposes. While CVE identifies and catalogs vulnerabilities, CVSS provides a way to evaluate their severity. A typical CVSS score ranges from 0 to 10, with higher numbers indicating more severe vulnerabilities based on factors like attack complexity, required privileges, and potential impact.
This distinction helps security teams properly contextualize threats. A high CVSS score doesn’t automatically make a vulnerability your top priority—you need to consider whether the affected system exists in your environment, its accessibility to potential attackers, and the business criticality of the asset.
Inside the CVE Database
When you first visit the CVE database, it might seem underwhelming—just a searchable list of vulnerabilities with basic details. Don’t let that simplicity fool you, though. The real power emerges when you understand how to extract and leverage the information it contains.
Let’s look at what’s actually inside a CVE entry. Take CVE-2023-3519, a critical vulnerability in Citrix Gateway that made headlines in 2023. The entry includes:
- A unique identifier (CVE-2023-3519)
- A description explaining the vulnerability is a remote code execution flaw
- Affected product information (Citrix ADC and Gateway)
- References to advisories and additional technical resources
- Publication and modification dates
What you won’t find are step-by-step exploitation instructions, proof-of-concept code, or detailed remediation procedures. The CVE database intentionally maintains a balance—providing enough information for security teams to identify if they’re affected without creating a roadmap for attackers.
Searching the database effectively requires some skill. Instead of just typing in product names, try using operators like “AND” and “OR” to narrow results. For example, searching for “Windows AND RCE AND 2023” helps find remote code execution vulnerabilities affecting Windows systems discovered in 2023. The advanced search options allow filtering by publication date, severity, and product (particularly useful when checking if recent vulnerabilities affect your environment).
One common misconception is that the CVE database includes every known vulnerability. It doesn’t. CVE focuses primarily on vulnerabilities in widely-used software and hardware. Niche products or custom applications might have vulnerabilities that never receive CVE IDs. Similarly, zero-day vulnerabilities being actively exploited aren’t in the database until they’re publicly disclosed.
What Do Professionals Do?
Seasoned security professionals supplement CVE with additional resources for comprehensive protection:
- The National Vulnerability Database (NVD) enhances CVE entries with additional analysis and severity scores
- Vendor security advisories often provide remediation steps not included in CVE entries
- Threat intelligence platforms add context about active exploitation in the wild
- Security blogs and research papers offer deeper technical analysis of significant vulnerabilities
Integrating CVE data into security workflows works best when automated. Most vulnerability scanners and security tools can automatically correlate findings with CVE IDs, but the real value comes from connecting this data to your specific environment. For example, linking CVE data with your asset inventory helps quickly identify which of your systems are vulnerable to newly published threats.
How to Operationalize CVE Data
Having access to the CVE database is one thing—actually using it to improve your security posture is another challenge entirely. Here, let’s talk about how to turn this information into practical security actions:
1. Integration
You need CVE data flowing directly into your security tools and processes. Most vulnerability scanners already map their findings to CVE IDs, but don’t stop there. Your ticketing system, patch management platform, and risk register should all reference these identifiers to maintain consistency across your security program.
Too many organizations fall into the “CVSS trap.” They prioritize vulnerabilities solely based on their severity score. While a CVSS 10.0 critical vulnerability definitely demands attention, raw scores don’t tell the whole story. Instead, build a prioritization framework that considers:
- Is the vulnerable system internet-facing or behind multiple layers of defense?
- Does the vulnerable component process sensitive data?
- Are there reports of active exploitation in the wild?
- Do you have compensating controls that might mitigate the risk?
- What’s the potential business impact if the vulnerability is exploited?
You’ll need to maintain accurate inventory if you want to connect CVEs to your technology stack. You can’t patch vulnerabilities in systems you don’t know you have. This is where automated discovery tools help—they identify forgotten servers, shadow IT, and assets that might otherwise fly under the radar. Each asset should be tagged with its business criticality and data classification to help with prioritization.
2. Patching
The timeline from disclosure to patching is where good vulnerability management programs shine. Consider establishing service-level agreements for different severity levels:
- Critical vulnerabilities: 48 hours to patch or mitigate
- High severity: 7 days
- Medium severity: 30 days
- Low severity: 90 days
Sometimes, patching isn’t immediately possible. If that’s the case, document compensating controls. Maybe you can’t patch that vulnerability in your legacy ERP system right away, but you can implement additional network monitoring and restrictions to reduce the risk while working on a permanent solution.
For especially significant vulnerabilities, consider forming “tiger teams” that bring together system owners, security engineers, and IT operations staff. These cross-functional groups can develop and execute remediation plans for complex vulnerabilities that impact multiple systems.
3. Verification
Vulnerability management doesn’t end with patching. Verification is equally important. After applying fixes, conduct targeted scans to confirm the vulnerability has been properly addressed. Sometimes, patches get incompletely applied or fail silently, leaving systems vulnerable despite being marked as “fixed.”
4. Iteration
Use CVE data to learn and improve. When major vulnerabilities affect your environment, conduct post-mortems to identify how similar issues might be prevented or detected earlier in the future.
Could better application security testing have caught this before deployment? Should architectural changes be considered to reduce the impact of similar vulnerabilities?
Build a Resilient Security Program with CVE
The CVE system may seem like a simple database of vulnerability identifiers, but it’s ultimately the foundation upon which effective security programs are built. Your organization needs more than just good intentions—it needs structured, repeatable processes for identifying, prioritizing, and addressing vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them.
The truth is that vulnerability management is complex and resource-intensive. There’s no getting around it. Many organizations find themselves playing an endless game of catch-up, struggling to address even critical CVEs before attackers exploit them. This is where a resilience service provider like Airiam becomes invaluable. It provides the expertise, tools, and additional resources needed to stay ahead of emerging threats.
We’ve seen firsthand how organizations strengthen their security posture by leveraging CVE. Our AirGuard™ cybersecurity suite continuously monitors for new vulnerabilities affecting your environment, while our teams handle the full lifecycle of vulnerability management (from identification to remediation).
Ready to strengthen your vulnerability management program? Contact us today to learn how our comprehensive security solutions can help protect your organization from both known CVEs and emerging threats.
