The Vulnerability Crisis No One is Funding

Last week, I asked Philippe Langlois, principal author of the 2026 Verizon DBIR, a simple question: if an MSP could only focus on one thing this year, what should it be? His answer, without hesitation: "Vulnerability management."

That tracks, as this is the first year in DBIR history that vulnerability exploitation has overtaken stolen credentials as the top breach entry point, jumping from 20% to 31%. Meanwhile, median time-to-patch climbed from 32 to 43 days, and only 26% of known exploited vulnerabilities got fully remediated.

As most know, NIST just overhauled how the National Vulnerability Database operates, moving to a risk-based triage model after CVE submissions jumped 263% since 2020. Joining us to unpack it is Steve Carter, CEO and co-founder of Nucleus Security, who's spent over two decades in vulnerability management