The $10M Distraction: Why 50,000 CVEs Don’t Matter (But 3 Attack Paths Do)

The latest forecast from FIRST is enough to keep any CISO awake: annual CVE disclosures are projected to surpass 50,000 in 2026, with some models predicting a surge as high as 117,000.

If your current strategy is "find every bug and patch it," you aren't just losing the race—you’re participating in a manual process while your adversaries are using machine-speed discovery. But here is the straight-talking truth: 94% of those vulnerabilities will never be exploited in the wild.

The real danger isn't the volume of bugs; it’s the lack of business context. 

While your team is buried in a mountain of "Critical" CVSS scores, attackers are finding the one "Medium" vulnerability that leads directly to your crown jewels.

The "Severity" Trap

Traditional vulnerability management relies on the CVSS score—a technical measurement of a bug's "hotness." But a CVSS 9.8 on a guest Wi-Fi printer is a distraction. A CVSS 6.5 on your revenue-critical payment gateway is a board-level crisis.

The cost of getting this wrong is staggering. 

In 2025, the average cost of a data breach in the U.S. hit an all-time high of $10.22 million. For sectors like Financial Services ($5.56M average) and Industrial/Manufacturing ($5.00M average), the margin for error has evaporated.

Learning from the "Scattered Spider" Era

We don’t have to look far to see the impact of revenue-centric attacks. In 2025, the Scattered Spider group executed a "Category 2 systemic event" against major UK retailers, causing an estimated $592M in damages.

The attackers didn't need a single "Super-CVE." They used chained together minor misconfigurations and social engineering to halt online sales for 46 days.

At OSec, we ask the question your scanner can't: "Could this attack path result in a 10% revenue drop?"

Shift From Vulnerability Triage to Validation with Incenter

Incenter isn't another scanner to add to your "shelfware" collection. It operationalizes the entire CTEM (Continuous Threat Exposure Management) cycle within a single, unified environment. By consolidating Attack Surface Management (ASM), Vulnerability Management (VM), Breach & Attack Simulation (BAS), and PTaaS, Incenter replaces the "noise" of siloed tools with a continuous loop of actionable ground truth.

Stop Playing Whack-a-Mole with CVEs

Gartner suggests that organizations that prioritize security investments through a CTEM program will be 3X less likely to suffer a breach.

Incenter delivers this by behaving like the bad guys—but for good. While a standard pen test takes 1–4 weeks, real attackers work on much longer, more patient timescales. Incenter levels the playing field by testing your environment 24/7, behaving like a persistent adversary who never sleeps. 

We don't stop at "potential" risks, either. Our testing will attempt to exploit vulnerabilities to verify their real-world impact. If a bug can’t be used to reach a "trophy," like your customer data, ERP, or revenue-critical systems, our report will show this and move it to the bottom of your list.

Finally, most reports lack context. Incenter uses your specific organizational data to place exposures in a business framework, ensuring your team is always working on the 1% of vulnerabilities that actually pose a threat to your revenue.

The Bottom Line

You cannot hire enough analysts to manual-triage 50,000 vulnerabilities. You need a system that translates "security" into “business risk."

Incenter frees your team from the CVE "Death Spiral" so they can focus on the exposures that actually move the needle on your bottom line.

Is your security budget protecting your servers, or your revenue? 

Book a 30-Minute Strategy Session with OSec to find out.