From Risk to Resilience: 5 Steps to Speed Remediation and Protect Your Organization

Security teams have one main goal: Avoid breaches. For anyone that works in security, you know this is easier said than done. With an influx of findings and risks coming at you from multiple sources, it can be daunting and time consuming trying to figure out what to fix first. 

We often see organizations making fixes based solely on CVSS. The issue with this is it doesn’t take the unique needs or operational context of your organization into account.
The most effective way to ensure you’re prioritizing the most critical vulnerabilities is to take a step back from your backlog and consider how your organization might be compromised. Once you understand the how it’s easier to identify which vulnerabilities could pose the largest threat.

Consideration #1: Points of Compromise

It’s well known in cybersecurity that while there are countless potential vulnerabilities across the technology landscape. But the reality is that the majority of successful breaches exploit a relatively small, predictable set of weaknesses. Attackers tend to rely on the same handful of flaws like misconfigurations, unpatched software, and well known CVEs because they are both prevalent and often left unresolved.

This concentration of risk is supported by industry data. Verizon’s 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) shows that the majority of attacks are focused on a small subset of vulnerabilities and that attackers are continuing to “leverage the tried-and-true tactics of stealing credentials, exploiting vulnerabilities and phishing to compromise organizations for a variety of different objectives.”  The CISA KEV catalog also supports this claim showing that even though there are new vulnerabilities every year, it’s usually the same vulnerabilities that keep getting exploited, likely because these are the vulnerabilities that organizations struggle to remediate at scale.

The point here isn’t that you should only concentrate on commonly exploited vulnerabilities, it’s that you should keep them in mind when prioritizing fixes. 

Consideration #2: The Attack Lifecycle

When determining how you might be compromised, you must trace how a threat actor can breach your environment through all phases of the attack lifecycle. It’s important to think like an attacker and evaluate how an attacker could exploit vulnerabilities within each stage of the lifecycle. These stages include tactics  like reconnaissance, gaining access, moving laterally, escalating privileges, and exfiltrating data. By thinking in terms of these stages, you can anticipate the kinds of activities attackers are likely to perform and build both defenses and detections. Penetration testing, in all its forms, is invaluable here, as it highlights precisely those exploitable conditions that attackers will leverage.

Consideration #3: The Role of Penetration Testing

Penetration testing helps reveal the actual weaknesses that attackers could exploit. Unlike automated scans that often generate long lists of potential issues, some of which may be theoretical, penetration testing demonstrates how those vulnerabilities play out in practice and are truly exploitable. It shows the real-world conditions that make an organization vulnerable, providing defenders with clear evidence of where controls are breaking down. This makes the findings more actionable, because teams can see not only that a weakness exists, but also the specific paths an attacker could take to exploit it. Furthermore, penetration testing highlights the ability to link seemingly lower risk vulnerabilities together to gain deeper compromise, where the combination of these findings represents a higher risk situation.

However, identifying risks is only half the battle. The true value of penetration testing comes when organizations act on those findings through remediation. Without fixing the weaknesses, even the most detailed report is little more than a snapshot of exposure. At the end of the day, someone has to do the hard work of remediating the highest risk findings.

Consideration #4: FIxing What Matters 

Remediating findings requires a systematic approach. Let’s walk through an approach that every organization should be using. 

• Prioritize in Context: As we’ve already discussed, not all vulnerabilities are created equal. Prioritize remediation efforts based on the vulnerabilities that actually lead to a breach. Prioritize those findings within the context of your business..
• Assign Ownership: Clear accountability is paramount. Assign ownership of remediation tasks to specific individuals or teams.
• Track with Visibility and Accountability: Ensure all stakeholders have visibility into the remediation process and that there’s clear accountability for progress.
• Validate Fixes: Don’t assume a fix is effective. Rigorously and continuously validate that the applied remediations have truly resolved the vulnerability.
• Continuously Test for Recurrence: The threat landscape is dynamic. Continuously test for the same or similar exploitable conditions in the future to prevent recurrence and adapt to new attack variants.

Ultimately, the techniques and vulnerabilities that consistently lead to breaches and compromise are relatively few and well-known. Attackers are lazy. They take the path of least resistance. This reality is both sobering and empowering. It means that organizations don’t have to chase every possible threat, they need to focus on the fundamentals. This will then force the attackers to work harder, giving you more time to prevent or detect their activities.

By dedicating resources to understanding these high-impact risks, testing for them through structured assessments and pentests, and then diligently remediating what is found, security teams can make measurable progress against real adversaries. It is in this systematic cycle that true resilience is built.

Interested in learning how PlexTrac can help you prioritize vulnerabilities and speed fixes? 

Dan DeCloss PlexTrac Founder/CTO Dan has over 15 years of experience in cybersecurity. Dan started his career in the Department of Defense and then moved on to consulting where he worked for various companies. Prior to PlexTrac, Dan was the Director of Cybersecurity for Scentsy where he and his team built the security program out of its infancy into a best-in-class program. Dan has a master’s degree in Computer Science from the Naval Postgraduate School with an emphasis in Information Security. Additionally, Dan holds the OSCP and CISSP certifications.