Five Steps to Reduce Risk with Qualys TruRisk™

Start by identifying your organization's risk appetite by answering key questions:

• What is your organization’s risk tolerance?
• What is the value of each asset to the business?
• What would be the impact if critical assets were compromised?

Classify assets based on their business importance. This allows Qualys TruRisk™ to apply business context to every vulnerability.

Accurate risk assessment starts with full visibility. Qualys TruRisk™ helps you:

• Discover and track all assets across your environment.
• Collect metadata such as asset type, owner, location, and business function.
• Map vulnerabilities to assets using both internal data and external threat intelligence.

To prioritize effectively, Qualys TruRisk™ enhances this inventory with multiple risk signals, similar to the Qualys Detection Score (QDS). This includes:

• Technical severity (e.g., CVSS) for baseline risk levels
• Temporal indicators such as exploit maturity and threat activity (e.g., ransomware associations, CISA KEV)
• Mitigation context like compensating controls or protections already in place

Qualys TruRisk™ also incorporates industry-standard risk signals:

• CISA KEV for confirmed exploited vulnerabilities.
• MITRE ATT&CK for mapping techniques to affected assets.
• EPSS to estimate the likelihood a vulnerability will be exploited soon.

Together, these signals allow Qualys TruRisk™ to calculate meaningful, real-world risk scores. This helps you focus on vulnerabilities most likely to be exploited, on the systems that matter most.

Understanding how important each asset is to your business is key to effective risk prioritization. Many organizations already have helpful resources like Business Continuity or Disaster Recovery Plans but don’t always use them in a security context.

One effective method is to assign each asset an Asset Criticality Score (ACS). This score is based on:

• Confidentiality: How sensitive is the data?
• Integrity: What happens if it’s modified or corrupted?
• Availability: What’s the impact if it goes offline?

Start with your most critical systems your “Crown Jewels” and assign them the highest scores. Then classify other assets as medium or low impact.

This approach links technical exposure (via QDS) with business impact (via ACS) to give you a complete view of what matters most. It helps you focus remediation efforts on assets where reducing risk has the greatest impact.

Effective risk management goes beyond counting vulnerabilities, it requires understanding how likely they are to be exploited and what business impact they could have.

Qualys TruRisk™ calculates risk using this formula:
Risk = Likelihood × Impact

• Likelihood is measured using TruRisk™’s risk engine (similar to QDS), which considers exploitability, threat intelligence, and live attacker activity.
• Impact is based on Asset Criticality Scores (ACS), reflecting how important an asset is to your business.

This dynamic scoring approach helps your team prioritize the most dangerous vulnerabilities first based on real-world conditions, not just CVSS severity. As environments and threats evolve, Qualys TruRisk™ allows you to validate and adjust your risk posture over time.

You can also align your efforts with established frameworks like NIST 800-37, ISO 31000, or COBIT, while using Qualys TruRisk™ to track progress and refine your remediation strategy.

Risk management doesn’t stop at identifying and prioritizing vulnerabilities, it’s just as important to demonstrate ongoing risk reduction.

Qualys TruRisk™ helps teams track progress and communicate results clearly. Here are four ways to do that effectively:

If you're using Patch Management, you can launch remediation jobs directly from its UI. Watch Now. 

1. Prioritize with Risk Modes
   • TruRisk™ Mode: Automatically prioritize remediation based on TruRisk™’s risk scoring (likelihood × impact). 
   • Custom Mode: Build your own prioritization strategy using threat indicators, detection age, and asset context.
2. Patch and Remediate Efficiently
   Shift to a patch-prioritized view to streamline actions. Focus on fixes that directly reduce high-risk exposures. Watch Now.
3. Use MITRE ATT&CK for Contextual Risk
   Leverage MITRE ATT&CK Matrix framework to understand which techniques are most relevant to your environment. Prioritize vulnerabilities tied to known attacker behaviors.
4. Monitor with the Steps to TruRisk™ Dashboard
   • No setup needed. Just import and start tracking.
   • View trends across vulnerabilities, CISA KEV, CVSS vs. TruRisk™’s risk score.
   • Get real-time updates as assets check in and risks change.
   • Understand business impact and track changes over time.

This gives you a measurable, real-time view of your risk posture making it easier to show progress, adjust plans, and keep stakeholders informed.