For too long, vulnerability management has relied on CVSS scores alone to guide remediation priorities. But as CISOs and vulnerability managers know, severity does not equal risk. A “critical” CVE may never be weaponized, while a “medium” severity issue could already be under active exploitation by ransomware operators. In an xIoT landscape where devices underpin core business operations, relying on CVSS alone leaves organizations exposed.
That’s why Phosphorus is taking vulnerability management further. The Phosphorus Autonomous Platform now enriches device data with CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog and FIRST’s Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS). This combination delivers real-world context and predictive insight to help CISOs, CIOs, and device owners focus on the vulnerabilities that matter most.
“The challenge is clear: organizations face too many vulnerabilities and not enough clarity on which ones truly matter. CVSS alone doesn’t solve that. KEV and EPSS do, because they highlight what is being exploited now and what is most likely to be exploited next.
That’s why we built them into the Phosphorus Platform. It’s not to check a box—it’s to give CISOs and CIOs a framework to defend decisions and allocate resources with confidence. And it’s to give operators automation so they’re not stuck chasing thousands of low-value alerts. At the end of the day, this is about making remediation measurable, defensible, and operationally efficient at scale.”
– Trevor Tomlinson,
Director of Product Management
The Problem with CVSS-Only Prioritization
Organizations often face thousands of vulnerabilities across their IoT, OT, and IoMT environments. Traditional CVSS scoring provides a baseline, but it fails to answer critical questions:
- Is this vulnerability being actively exploited?
- How likely is it to be weaponized soon?
- Does this exposure put my operations, compliance, or customers at immediate risk?
Without those answers, security teams spread resources thinly, treating every vulnerability as urgent. The result is alert fatigue, delayed remediation, and persistent blind spots.
Adding Exploit Context to xIoT Risk Management
With KEV and EPSS integrated into the Phosphorus platform, vulnerability management shifts from theoretical severity to actionable risk intelligence.
KEV Enrichment:
- Direct correlation of device vulnerabilities against CISA’s authoritative KEV catalog
- Immediate visibility into vulnerabilities known to be exploited in the wild
- Automated alerts when new entries hit the KEV list
- Federal compliance alignment with CISA BOD 22-01 requirements
EPSS Enrichment:
- Machine learning-driven exploit probability scoring (0–100%)
- Daily updates predicting the likelihood of exploitation within the next 30 days
- Percentile-based benchmarking to compare risk across assets
- Historical analytics to understand exploit trends
KEV and EPSS provide a richer context around each xIoT vulnerability, moving organizations from “What’s critical?” to “What’s most dangerous right now?”
Key Capabilities for CISOs, CIOs, and Device Owners
Phosphorus has built KEV and EPSS intelligence directly into existing workflows:
- Automated Intelligence: Real-time KEV correlation and daily EPSS refreshes ensure teams always act on current data.
- Risk Prioritization: A combined framework aligns vulnerability status, exploit likelihood, and compliance needs.
- Operational Integration: Alerting, dashboards, automated ticketing, and RESTful APIs bring context into SIEM/SOAR and ITSM systems.
This means security leaders can move from discovery → enrichment → prioritized remediation, all without manual research or disconnected tools.
Business Value: Smarter Remediation, Faster Risk Reduction
With KEV and EPSS integrated into the Phosphorus platform, vulnerability management shifts from theoretical severity to actionable risk intelligence.
Operational Efficiency:
- Reduce noise and focus teams on what truly matters
- Automate compliance reporting and KEV mandate tracking
- Streamline triage with intelligent filtering
Risk Reduction:
- Address vulnerabilities with known exploits before they’re used against you
- Preemptively mitigate high-probability threats
- Strengthen defenses against ransomware and nation-state adversaries
For CIOs and device owners, this context means remediation efforts are no longer a guessing game; they are data-driven, defensible, and automated.
A Smarter Journey from Discovery to Remediation
With Phosphorus, organizations move beyond simply identifying device vulnerabilities. The platform enables a full lifecycle approach:
- Discovery & Assessment– Intelligent Active Discovery provides an accurate device inventory.
- Enrichment– Each vulnerability is contextualized with KEV and EPSS intelligence.
- Prioritization– Security leaders and device owners know which issues pose immediate risk.
- Remediation – Automated fixes: password rotations, firmware updates, and configuration changes, to reduce your exposure with minimal manual effort.
The Future of xIoT Risk Management
The rise of ransomware campaigns targeting cameras, printers, HVAC systems, and other unmanaged devices underscores a simple reality: not all vulnerabilities are created equal. By combining known exploit data and predictive scoring into the Phosphorus Platform, organizations get a true picture of their risk profile and a prioritized list of vulnerabilities to remediate.
CISOs gain defensible prioritization. CIOs and device owners get clear remediation paths. Security teams eliminate wasted cycles.
The result? A safer, more resilient xIoT environment, secured automatically, at scale.
Don’t Just Find It. Fix It.
Phosphorus enables proactive defense against Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEVs) through intelligent automation that identifies, tracks, and remediates devices with CISA-cataloged vulnerabilities before they can be exploited within your environment. The platform transforms reactive vulnerability management into a continuous, automated security operation.
User Workflow
- Smart Detection: Phosphorus can instantly identify all devices with Known Exploited Vulnerabilities across users’ environments. Users can then automate the remediation of devices with KEVs via smart queries and remediation campaigns.
- Automated Remediation: Convert queries tailored to fetching KEVs into Advanced Jobs that automatically remediate vulnerable devices as they’re discovered. These remediation campaigns, configured with smart queries, detect and can automatically patch devices with KEVs during user-defined maintenance windows.
- Continuous Protection: Configure jobs to run on schedules, ensuring new devices with KEVs are automatically detected and queued for remediation without manual intervention.
Turning Context into Action
With KEV and EPSS intelligence now integrated into the Phosphorus Autonomous Platform, vulnerability management for xIoT devices becomes smarter, faster, and more effective. Instead of drowning in alerts or chasing CVSS scores in isolation, security leaders can focus resources on the vulnerabilities that pose the greatest real-world threat to their operations.
This enhancement delivers operational clarity, regulatory alignment, and measurable risk reduction—all within the same automated workflows customers already rely on. By pairing enriched context with automated remediation, Phosphorus ensures that every vulnerability response is not just prioritized, but acted on at scale.
We invite you to start using this new feature today and share your feedback. Your insights will help us continue refining the platform to make xIoT environments safer, stronger, and more resilient.
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