Nov 22, 2024

Hot Take: Microsoft and Wiz Moves Signal Threat Exposure Management Momentum

by Brinqa Security Team

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This week’s moves by Microsoft and Wiz send a clear message: the way enterprises manage vulnerabilities is ripe for change. But the shift required goes beyond better remediation tools—it demands a transformation in how organizations understand and act on risk. And, there’s good reason, Gartner predicts that by 2026, organizations that embrace CTEM will see two-thirds fewer breaches.

We at Brinqa have always believed in the power of a unified approach to exposure management, and our platform is purpose-built to enable continuous threat exposure management. Here are a few important lessons learned over the years as we’ve enabled some of the world’s largest enterprises to achieve their exposure management goals.

Risk Exists in the Context of Your Business

Technology, exposures, and vulnerabilities don’t exist in isolation. They are woven into the fabric of the business, influencing everything from operational resilience to customer trust and revenue protection. Yet many vulnerability management programs still treat risks as technical issues to be patched rather than as business-critical challenges to be addressed strategically.

It’s time for CISOs to elevate their role as business leaders and make the transformation from to correlate technology and business risk.

Vulnerability Management Doesn’t Reduce Risk

Security teams are overwhelmed. Every day, new vulnerabilities emerge, tools generate endless alerts, and teams are left drowning in spreadsheets trying to prioritize what to fix. But chasing every vulnerability—without understanding its context—is a fool’s errand:

The business needs answers, not excuses: Business leaders care about reducing risk to operations and outcomes—not the technical details of how it happens. Security teams struggle to prioritize vulnerabilities effectively without understanding their relevance to the threat landscape and business-critical operations.
Organizations have too many security tools and too few answers: With fragmented scanners and data scattered across IT, applications, and cloud infrastructure, CISOs only see a slice of the risk picture but no holistic view.
Busywork distracts from the real risks lurking in the business and leads to burnout and frustration. Enterprises managing tens of thousands of assets across hybrid environments need solutions that can operate at scale, automating the tedious tasks that keep teams from focusing on what matters.

CISOs must move beyond the reactive cycle of patching and instead provide the insights and leadership needed to align cybersecurity with business priorities.

The Key to Reducing Business Risk: Context & Correlation

What’s missing in traditional vulnerability management? Context. Understanding risk in the broader picture of the business and the threat landscape is what enables organizations to make meaningful progress in reducing the risks that matter.

Business Systems & Risk Correlation:
- Which vulnerabilities could disrupt critical business functions?
- How do exposures affect compliance, customer trust, or revenue?
- What initiatives (e.g., cloud migrations, digital transformations) are introducing risk that needs to be managed proactively?
Threat Landscape Context:
- Are vulnerabilities being actively exploited?
- How likely is a particular exposure to be targeted based on our industry or attack trends?
- What’s the potential impact of an exploit on our operations or reputation?

Without this context, vulnerability management becomes a guessing game. But with it, CISOs can focus efforts where they’ll make the most positive impact on the business.

The CISO’s New Mandate: Insights That Drive Business Decisions

To make this shift, CISOs must step up as strategic leaders who can bridge the gap between technical risk and business outcomes, one of the core principles of Enterprise Security Risk Management. It will require infosec leaders to embrace a unified, enterprise-scale approach to vulnerability management—one that connects IT assets, applications, and systems with the realities of the business and the threat landscape.

This is where Brinqa comes in:

Unify Tools and Data: Brinqa aggregates and normalizes data from all your existing security tools, creating a single source of truth for vulnerabilities and exposures.
Apply Contextual Intelligence: Correlate vulnerabilities with business impact and threat intelligence to prioritize what matters most.
Drive Action Across Teams: Automate workflows to ensure accountability and fast remediation—aligned with business priorities.

By providing the visibility and insights needed to align cyber risk with business risk, Brinqa helps CISOs take control of their exposure landscape and lead meaningful risk reduction efforts. See how we do it and read up on our new Exposure Management case studies to see how the largest enterprises are taking a unified approach to exposure management.

The Reality: Business and Cyber Risk Are Inseparable

In today’s interconnected world, every IT asset, application, and vulnerability exists within the context of the business. The risks that matter most aren’t just technical—they’re the ones that could disrupt operations, erode trust, or undermine strategic goals.

Chasing every vulnerability isn’t just inefficient—it’s dangerous. CISOs who fail to adopt a business-aligned approach risk falling behind in an increasingly complex and high-stakes threat environment.

The path forward is clear: to make a meaningful impact on business risk, CISOs must embrace tools and strategies that provide the context, visibility, and actionability needed to lead effectively.

What’s your take? Are your vulnerability management efforts aligned with your business priorities?

Let’s discuss how.