Enterprise Security Weekly (Audio) Disruption is Coming for the Vulnerability Management Market - Tod Beardsley - ESW #425
13 snips
Sep 22, 2025 Tod Beardsley, VP of Security Research at RunZero and an expert in security, discusses the shortcomings of traditional vulnerability management. He emphasizes the failure of CVE-centric approaches and highlights the importance of addressing issues like default credentials and misconfigurations. The conversation dives into recent NPM supply chain attacks, the fragility of the ecosystem, and community-driven solutions. Beardsley also touches on the latest trends in AI acquisitions and the cautious embrace of agentic AI within the banking sector.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
CVE vs Malware Noise
- Issuing CVEs for malware-injected package versions creates noise and may be the wrong signal for defenders.
- CVE serves best as a shared dictionary, not a real-time threat-intel feed.
Security Tools Are High-Value Targets
- Security products themselves become attractive attack targets because they have privileged access and reach.
- Devices like VPNs and firewalls have been implicated in initial access attacks leading to breaches.
Reduce Attack Surface From Scanners
- Prefer unauthenticated discovery and passive profiling to reduce the attack surface created by privileged scanning credentials.
- Avoid over-reliance on authenticated, intrusive scans that themselves can be a security liability.