CTEM Academy

Every system exposed to the internet represents both opportunity and risk. While connectivity powers innovation and efficiency, it also opens doors for attackers. Internet exposure has become one of the most overlooked yet dangerous dimensions of exposure management. This article explores the hidden risks, common misconceptions, and best practices, and highlights how Zafran helps organizations regain control.

Every modern organization ships software, and every line of code introduces risk. A handful of vulnerability classes appear again and again in breach post-mortems and industry research. Knowing how (and why) they happen is the first step toward eliminating them and toward focusing scarce remediation efforts where it actually lowers risk. This guide distills the latest findings from Zafran’s research on real-world exploit data and the OWASP Top 10 to give you a decisive, actionable playbook.

Remote Code Execution (RCE) sits at the very top of every CISO’s threat hierarchy. With a single payload, an attacker can pivot from zero access to total control, triggering board-level questions within minutes. This explainer demystifies how RCE works in 2025, anchoring the discussion in headline incidents, such as Equifax/Struts, WannaCry/EternalBlue, Log4Shell, and showing why RCE remains the most dangerous software flaw on the planet.

Vulnerability exploitation remains a leading cause of breaches, yet many organizations still take weeks, or months, to deploy available patches. With attackers now using AI to exploit vulnerabilities within hours, even minutes of their disclosure, security teams can ill-afford delays. This guide explains why patching is slow, what really matters, and how to accelerate remediation without burning out your team.

Security leaders know that every hour a critical vulnerability stays unpatched is an hour the business stands exposed. Yet real world factors, such as legacy “unpatchable” systems, limited maintenance windows, and change control friction push average patch times past 100 days for critical flaws. When one considers that average time to exploit (ie, the time between patch availability and vulnerability exploitation) has shrunk from 32 days, to 5 days, and now to -1 day over the last 3 years (Mandiant), the dystopian current state of vulnerability management at large comes into sharper focus.

Mitigation, or “mitigation without patching,” removes patching from the critical path of risk reduction, putting quick controls in place to lower risk now, buying you time to fix the root cause of the issue safely. This article explains why the technique matters, how to do it well, and where Zafran fits into a modern vulnerability management program.

Cybersecurity has evolved from an IT concern to a board-level business priority. With 50% of corporate boards now ranking cybersecurity threats among their top five business issues, executives are demanding more than periodic security assessments and reactive patch management. They want continuous, measurable risk reduction that aligns with business objectives and regulatory requirements.

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) addresses this demand by transforming security from episodic scanning to a strategic, business-aligned risk reduction program. Unlike traditional vulnerability management that produces overwhelming lists of CVEs, CTEM's five-step cycle (scoping, discovery, prioritization, validation, and mobilization) creates an actionable framework that executives can understand and measure.

The stakes are clear: organizations using CTEM are predicted to suffer two-thirds fewer breaches by 2026. In today's threat landscape where attack surfaces expand by 300+ new services monthly and vulnerabilities are weaponized within 24 hours in nearly 30% of cases, building a compelling business case for CTEM isn't just about security; it's about business survival and competitive advantage.

The sheer volume and velocity of newly disclosed vulnerabilities has upended traditional “patch everything” approaches. This year, security teams faced more than 40,000 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), a figure projected to surge past 47,000 in 2025. Even worse, attackers now weaponize many flaws within hours of public disclosure, shrinking defenders’ response window from a median of five days in 2023 (Mandiant) to less than 1 day in 2024 (Mandiant). Surviving this high-velocity threat landscape demands a risk-based vulnerability prioritization program that focuses scarce resources on the tiny subset of bugs most likely to bite. This guide synthesizes the latest research and field experience to give you a practical, end-to-end blueprint.

In today’s cybersecurity landscape, organizations face an ever-growing number of vulnerabilities. This article explores the concept of Unified Vulnerability Management (UVM) and outlines the best practices necessary to manage vulnerabilities efficiently across complex environments. We will also discuss how Zafran Security’s solutions can enhance vulnerability management, ensuring quicker, more effective responses to security risks.

Enterprises are drowning in cybersecurity alerts and data, yet struggle to identify what truly threatens their business. With tens of thousands of new vulnerabilities each year and attack surfaces expanding across cloud, hybrid, and remote environments, traditional vulnerability management approaches have reached their breaking point. The solution lies in two converging disciplines: Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ), which translates cyber threats into financial terms, and Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM), which provides a structured approach to finding, testing, and fixing what matters most.

This research brief explores how leading organizations are abandoning subjective "red/yellow/green" risk categorization in favor of data-driven risk models that speak the language of business. By quantifying cyber risk in dollars and implementing continuous exposure management programs, security teams can finally answer the executive question: "What will it cost us if we don't fix this?"

Cybersecurity teams don’t just need more data; they need the right insights at the right time. Threat intelligence turns raw digital noise into actionable knowledge, helping organizations anticipate attacks and respond with confidence

When most people think about hackers, they picture phishing emails or stolen passwords, but in reality, vulnerability exploitation remains one of the leading causes of security breaches worldwide. Vulnerability exploitation remains one of the leading causes of security breaches worldwide. Traditional vulnerability management tools, while useful, often fail to keep pace with modern attack surfaces that span cloud, on-premises, containers, and IoT. Unified Vulnerability Management (UVM) addresses this gap by delivering a continuous, integrated, and risk-based approach to identifying, prioritizing, and remediating vulnerabilities across the enterprise.

This guide explains what UVM is, why it matters, common challenges organizations face, and how best practices and solutions like the Zafran Threat Exposure Management Platform can help teams cut through the noise, pinpoint their biggest risks, and drive them to closure more effectively.

Ransomware crews now weaponize fresh CVEs in under a week, while regulators such as the EU’s NIS2 and the U.S. SEC demand risk-based cyber hygiene. Traditional vulnerability management (VM) alone struggles to keep up. This article clarifies how classic VM, risk-based VM (RBVM), and the emerging continuous threat-exposure management (CTEM) framework differ, where each excels or falls short, and how security teams can chart an evidence-based evolution path for 2026.

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) only pays dividends when the exposures it uncovers are fixed. The mobilization phase, or the “last mile” of CTEM, translates findings into concrete risk reduction, yet many teams stumble here. This article shows security and IT leaders how to build a response-ready foundation, prioritize what matters, and drive fast, repeatable remediation.

Vulnerability exploitation is now the leading initial access vector behind security breaches. Traditional VM programs leave security teams drowning in alerts. All too often, they lack the context that shows which exposure presents the biggest risk, instead overrotating on generic measures of severity. Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) changes all that.

Risk-based vulnerability management (RBVM) nudged security teams beyond raw CVSS scores, yet it was only a waypoint on the exposure management journey. Security teams are still drowning in alerts, with little more than threat intel layered atop CVSS to dimly light a path forward. Threat actors are exploiting vulnerabilities and exposures using advanced tactics, automation, and even AI. The average time to exploit now sits at 5 days.

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) meets this challenge head-on, prioritizing, validating, and responding to what are actually the organization’s biggest risks. This article discusses how to migrate from RBVM to CTEM in pragmatic, business-aligned steps that every team can follow, to focus finite resources on the most exploitable threats and accrue quick wins.

Modern enterprises face tens of thousands of new Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) every year, yet only a fraction are ever weaponized. Choosing which flaws to fix first can make all the difference between a headline-making breach and business as usual. This article unpacks the research-backed risk factors that matter most in vulnerability prioritization and explains how leading teams and Zafran’s Threat Exposure Management Platform converts those insights into measurable risk reduction.