What Is a Threat Exposure Management Platform? A Guide

For years, vulnerability management has been like a doctor treating symptoms without a diagnosis. You get a report full of issues—a high temperature here, a cough there—and you try to treat the most severe ones first. But you lack the context to understand the root cause. Are these symptoms...

How Cisco Talos powers the solutions protecting your organization

Cisco Talos is Cisco's threat intelligence and security research organization that powers Cisco's product portfolio with that intelligence. While we are well known for the security research in our blog, vulnerability discoveries, and our open-source software, you may not be aware of exactly how o...

Cyber Threat Exposure Management: A 5-Step Guide

Attackers don’t care about your long list of CVEs. They look for the path of least resistance to your most valuable assets. So, why are we still managing security from a defender’s checklist instead of an attacker’s playbook? A modern security program needs to see the entire attack surface throug...

What Is Security Controls Validation? An Essential Guide

You wouldn’t wait for a real fire to find out if your smoke detectors work or if your team knows the evacuation route. You run fire drills. So why would you wait for a real cyberattack to test your security defenses? This is the simple, powerful idea behind security controls validation. It’s the...

Cyber Risk Prioritization: A Practical Guide

For years, security teams have relied on static scores like CVSS to guide their patching efforts. While helpful, these scores only tell part of the story. They show a vulnerability's potential severity but lack the real-world context of what attackers are actually doing right now. A theoretical...

Threat Intelligence Driven IP Protection for Entrepreneurial SMEs

Entrepreneurial small to medium enterprises face significant cybersecurity challenges when developing valuable intellectual property IP. This paper addresses the critical gap in research on how E-SMEs can protect their IP assets from cybersecurity threats through effective threat intelligence and...

Exploring the Integration of Differential Privacy in Cybersecurity Analytics: Balancing Data Utility and Privacy in Threat Intelligence

To resolve the acute problem of privacy protection and guarantee that data can be used in the context of threat intelligence, this paper considers the implementation of Differential Privacy DP in cybersecurity analytics. DP, which is a sound mathematical framework, ensures privacy by adding a...

SCyTAG: Scalable Cyber-Twin for Threat-Assessment Based on Attack Graphs

Understanding the risks associated with an enterprise environment is the first step toward improving its security. Organizations employ various methods to assess and prioritize the risks identified in cyber threat intelligence CTI reports that may be relevant to their operations. Some methodologi...

How BAS Improves Vulnerability Management (And Why)

A vulnerability without context is just a data point. A medium-severity flaw might seem like a low priority, but what if you knew it was being actively used in a new ransomware campaign targeting your industry? This is why threat intelligence is so crucial. The answer to how does BAS improve...

How Threat Intelligence Transforms Vulnerability Management

Your security team isn't just fixing technical flaws; they're protecting the business from tangible risks. The problem is, a list of thousands of CVEs doesn't communicate business impact very well. It’s just noise until you can connect a vulnerability to a potential outcome. Threat intelligence...

What is Continuous Threat Exposure Management? A Guide For CISOs and Vulnerability Teams

Traditional vulnerability management has taught us to look for weaknesses inside our own walls. But what if we flipped the script and started looking at our defenses from the outside in, just like an attacker does? Attackers don't care about CVSS scores; they care about pathways. They look for th...

SonicWall Fixes Actively Exploited CVE-2025-40602 in SMA 100 Appliances

SonicWall has rolled out fixes to address a security flaw in Secure Mobile Access SMA 100 series appliances that it said has been actively exploited in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-40602 CVSS score: 6.6, concerns a case of local privilege escalation that arises as a result of...

Lexi DiScola’s guide to global teamwork and overflowing TBRs

Welcome back to Humans of Talos. This month, Amy chats with Senior Cyber Threat Analyst Lexi DiScola from the Strategic Analysis team. Lexi's journey into cybersecurity is anything but traditional -- she brings a background in political science and French to her work tracking global cyber threats...

How to Modernize Your Vulnerability Management Program A Helpful Resource Guide For CISOS and Vuln teams

Running a vulnerability scan can feel like opening Pandora's box. You’re suddenly faced with a report listing thousands of potential weaknesses, and the pressure to "fix everything" is immense. But this approach is a recipe for burnout, leaving your team chasing low-impact issues while a real...

What is EPSS? How to Correctly Correctly Prioritize Vulnerabilities

Let's cut right to it. Your vulnerability management team has a list of vulnerabilities longer than your arm, and every single one seems to be a top priority. But you don't have the time or resources to fix everything at once. You need a way to focus on what truly matters right now. This is the...

LegionITS: A Federated Intrusion-Tolerant System Architecture

The growing sophistication, frequency, and diversity of cyberattacks increasingly exceed the capacity of individual entities to fully understand and counter them. While existing solutions, such as Security Information and Event Management SIEM systems, Security Orchestration, Automation, and...

The 5 Stages of Continuous Threat Exposure Management

Attackers don’t care about your compliance reports or the sheer number of vulnerabilities you have. They look for a single, exploitable path to your most valuable assets. To defend effectively, you need to see your organization through their eyes. This is the core principle behind continuous thre...

What Is Security Control Validation? A Practical Guide

A fully-stocked security arsenal can create a dangerous false sense of security. You might have the best technology on the market, but misconfigurations, policy gaps, or a lack of integration can leave you just as exposed as having no tools at all. Relying on a defense that only looks good on pap...

React2Shell Exploitation Escalates into Large-Scale Global Attacks, Forcing Emergency Mitigation

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA has urged federal agencies to patch the recent React2Shell vulnerability by December 12, 2025, amid reports of widespread exploitation. The critical vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-55182 CVSS score: 10.0, affects the React Server...

Imposter for hire: How fake people can gain very real access

In the latest edition of our Cyberattack Series, we dive into a real-world case of fake employees. Cybercriminals are no longer just breaking into networks—they’re gaining access by posing as legitimate employees. This form of cyberattack involves operatives posing as legitimate remote hires,...