Picus Rolls Out Exposure Validation to Help Security Teams Focus on What Actually Matters

Picus Security has launched Exposure Validation, a new feature designed to help security teams cut through the noise of thousands of new vulnerabilities and focus only on those that are actually exploitable in their own environments.

The tool continuously tests existing defenses against real-world attack techniques and assigns each vulnerability an Exposure Score—a context-aware metric that reflects how well current controls mitigate actual threats. It’s a shift away from broad-stroke ratings like CVSS or EPSS, which often inflate risk by ignoring how vulnerabilities behave in real-world conditions.

Dr. Süleyman Özarslan, co-founder of Picus Security and VP of Picus Labs highlights, "Exposure Validation is changing how cybersecurity teams prioritize vulnerabilities by replacing generic risk scores with real-world evidence. Traditional methods like CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) and EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) estimate the severity and likelihood of exploitation, but they don’t reflect the actual conditions of an organization’s environment. This disconnect leads to overprioritization and wasted effort."

The core capability, Picus Exposure Score—an evidence-based, dynamic risk metric, considers environmental context, existing security measures, and threat behavior. This scoring system enables security teams to shift from patching based on perceived severity to prioritizing based on proven exposure. Teams receive automated, real-time validation results that are not only actionable but also aligned with compliance needs and internal reporting requirements. This allows faster, more confident decision-making and significantly reduces manual effort tied to vulnerability triage and response.

This matters because most organizations are drowning in patching demands, and much of that effort is wasted. In one case, a global enterprise discovered that while 63% of its vulnerabilities were tagged as “critical” by CVSS, only 9% posed any real risk once Picus ran live simulations. That’s a significant time and resource savings—without sacrificing security.

Early adopters of Exposure Validation are seeing tangible operational gains by shifting their focus from theoretical vulnerability scores to actual, validated risk. Instead of reacting to every high or critical CVSS rating, security teams are using real-world exploitability data to determine which threats genuinely warrant attention. “Organizations using Exposure Validation have been able to deprioritize up to 98% of vulnerabilities that, while rated high or critical by CVSS, pose no real-world threat due to existing security controls or architectural barriers," says Özarslan.

This targeted approach has translated into an average 86% reduction in patching workload, freeing up significant time and resources. Teams are also reporting a drop in mean time to remediate (MTTR) from 74 days to just 14, allowing them to act more decisively on risks that matter. Overall, Exposure Validation is helping teams cut through noise, reduce fatigue, and better align remediation efforts with actual business impact.

As attack surfaces expand and security workloads intensify, organizations need smarter ways to focus limited resources. With automated validation, tailored mitigation advice, and transparent reporting, Exposure Validation helps teams make faster decisions and back them up with evidence.