How to Prioritize Vulnerabilities in Your Supply Chain: A Proven Approach to Cut Through the Noise of TPRM
- Heighten CORE Member
- May 22
- 2 min read
Original Blog published by our Third-Party Risk Management Partner, Black Kite here.
Drowning in vulnerability alerts? You’re not alone. Cybersecurity professionals dealing with Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) are facing an overwhelming flood of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), making it nearly impossible to address every single threat. Traditional methods of vulnerability management, often relying solely on severity scores, simply aren’t cutting it in today’s complex supply chain environment. How do you decide which vulnerabilities to tackle first when you have thousands clamoring for attention?
Fortunately, there’s a better way.
In this video, I walk through the findings of our 2025 Supply Chain Vulnerability Report, featuring original research by the Black Kite Research & Intelligence Team (BRITE), breaking down the key challenges of vulnerability prioritization and introducing a powerful three-dimensional approach that helps TPRM professionals effectively prioritize vulnerabilities in their supply chain. This method allows you to focus on what truly matters and dramatically reduce risk.
Three Dimensions for Prioritizing CVEs in TPRM:
1. Severity
This is the traditional approach, using metrics like CVSS to assess the potential impact of a vulnerability. While important, the report emphasizes that severity alone is insufficient.
2. Exploitability
This dimension considers the likelihood of a vulnerability being actively exploited by threat actors. Factors like the availability of exploit code and threat actor trends come into play.
3. Exposure
This crucial element addresses how many of your vendors or third parties are susceptible to a specific vulnerability. A high-severity, easily exploitable vulnerability affecting a large number of your vendors poses a significantly greater risk.
Result: Hear the Signal in the Noise
By combining these three dimensions, security teams can move beyond simply reacting to the loudest alerts and develop a truly strategic approach to vulnerability management. The video provides clear explanations and visual aids to help you grasp these concepts and begin implementing them in your own organization.
Third-party partnerships are essential to business operations, however, they also introduce complex risks that require a reliable, comprehensive TPRM solution.
We’re here to tell you that effective risk reduction should never be a solo mission. Heighten’s TrueInsight (third-party risk management as a solution) is your right-hand solution for evaluating and quantifying the potential impacts of risks associated with your providers, third-party partners, and system integrations- a gap in security that threat actors increasingly exploit.
Get in touch to learn why organisations trust our TrueInsight for effective third-party risk management → hi10.io/trueinsight
At Heighten we take a no-nonsense approach to information security, delivering effective solutions tailored to your needs. We focus on right-sized solutions that balance strong security with practicality, ensuring that your operations stay efficient and protected. With continuous monitoring, incident response planning, and regular audits, we empower your organization to confidently navigate the evolving threat landscape. Providing the highest level of managed security services we can confidently ensure your organization and its most valuable assets are protected- indefinitely.
Elevate your cybersecurity by having a conversation with one of our experts. We are ready to help you take your security from vulnerable to relentless.
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