Not all risks are created equal. When organizations analyze their exposure, it’s easy to get distracted by the volume of low- and medium-severity risks.
Our latest research, detailed in Mapping Cyber Risks from the Outside, reveals a clear picture: service exposure, application exposure, and other easy-to-detect but low-priority risks make up almost half of all exposures in the external attack surface. However, these risks, while common, are unlikely to be scored as severe incidents.
On the flip side, the top four categories—Injection Risks, Cloud & SaaS Configuration Issues, Exposed Secrets, and Authorization & Authentication Problems—represent a far greater threat. These risks have higher severity scores, making them critical priorities for security teams.
Low-impact risks Dominate the Landscape
According to our report, most risks fall into low or medium categories. These include:
- Service Exposure – Open ports can reveal services like SSH, FTP, and RDP.
- Application Exposure – Can leak information via logs and status pages.
While these risks matter, they often mislead security teams as they are often scored as Low or Information in term of severity. The result? Security teams spend valuable time working on these risks instead of more impactful ones.
Focus on the Critical Few: The Top 4 Risks
Let’s shift attention to risks to the most common critical and high-severity risks
- Injection Risks (57% of all critical risks are injection risks)
SQL injections, cross-site scripting (XSS), and remote code execution (RCE) are more than common vulnerabilities—they’re catastrophic if exploited. These issues allow attackers to take control of systems, steal data, and disrupt business operations. - Cloud & SaaS Configuration Issues (58% of cloud risks are critical or high severity)
Misconfigured cloud platforms leave sensitive data exposed to anyone with an internet connection. Insecure SaaS setups are a growing target as companies increasingly move operations to the cloud. - Exposed Secrets (Nearly 80% of exposed secrets are classified as critical or high severity)
Hardcoded keys, tokens, or sensitive credentials are a direct line to your systems. Exposed secrets are low in number but carry critical risk levels, as attackers can quickly gain unauthorized access. - Authorization & Authentication Issues
Weak or broken authentication methods undermine your defenses. Issues like insecure direct object references (IDOR) and CSRF attacks are commonly exploited to bypass protections.
Focusing on these top risks ensures that your security teams prioritize the vulnerabilities with the highest potential impact, rather than getting distracted by low-severity issues.
Why Prioritizing Matters
Security teams have limited time and resources. Effective risk prioritization is essential when there are so many alerts demanding attention. The process begins with identifying critical assets and associated threats. This involves understanding which systems, applications, and data are most essential to the business and evaluating the potential threats targeting them.
The business context must be integrated into the prioritization process, ensuring that risks are aligned with organizational objectives. By considering the impact of potential risks on revenue, reputation, and operations, security teams can focus on what truly matters to the business.
Finally, prioritization should also include technical impact such as CVSS scores and exploitability which can include whether there is a proof of concept for the exploit or known active exploitation This approach ensures that high-impact, easily exploitable risks are addressed first while balancing available resources for effective risk management.
Reduce Noise, Elevate Impact
Stop letting the sheer volume of low-priority risks dictate your strategy. Shift focus to the top risks—Injection, Cloud Configuration, Exposed Secrets, and Authentication.
By prioritizing the most severe threats, security teams can better allocate their resources, reduce risk exposure, and ensure they’re solving the problems that matter most.
To dive deeper into the data and learn how to prioritize your organization’s most critical risks, download Hadrian’s 2024 Report: Mapping Cyber Risks from the Outside today. Stay ahead of threats with insights that matter.
