Additionally, the known exploited vulnerabilities have stayed level with the previous years (2020-2023) excluding the spike during the remote working shift during the COVID-19 pandemic (see Figure 24) and prime opportunity to target the less secure home worker. However, it would be reasonable to assume that malicious actors will not disclose the vulnerabilities they are utilising to enable greater success on their objectives.
The stable trend of vulnerability disclosures in previous years seems to have come to an end.
With the innovative security measure of BugBounty programmes being adopted by organisations to find vulnerabilities in their software and hardware before adversaries, it encourages the ethical disclosure of security vulnerabilities by security researchers to vendors giving them chance to patch before exploitation occurs by malicious actors, enhancing their security posture.
Figure 24: Known Exploited Vulnerabilities
Looking forward into 2024, it is highly likely the number of vulnerability disclosures will continue its upwards trajectory year over year given the increase in BugBounty initiatives, and with global governments understanding that increased disclosure could see increased exploitation attempts, given greater awareness. Additionally, generative AI will keep evolving and help organisations improve their security posture whilst also being leveraged by malicious actors to enhance their capabilities.
Historic vulnerabilities will also continue to be abused by adversaries as it is common knowledge that not all organisations have an efficient patch management programme in place to successfully mitigate the threats these historic vulnerabilities pose. Therefore, organisations should enforce an actionable and appropriate patch management programme to mitigate the risks posed by disclosed vulnerabilities and ensure they are consuming and actioning relevant threat intelligence from mature intelligence functions, be that internal or third-party providers, to allow for a proactive approach to their security posture.
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