The foundational infrastructure that the global cybersecurity community has relied upon for decades to identify and manage software flaws is crumbling under the weight of its own structural and operational deficiencies. This critical failure within the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) system and its associated National Vulnerability Database (NVD) has exposed a dangerous over-reliance on a centralized, government-funded model that is no longer capable of keeping pace with the modern threat landscape. A near-shutdown event in 2025 served as a final, jarring alarm, revealing systemic weaknesses that have been worsening for years. The ongoing operational gridlock, coupled with an adherence to outdated risk metrics, has created a crisis of confidence and forced a reckoning across the industry, sparking an urgent and necessary evolution toward a more resilient, decentralized, and risk-aware future for vulnerability intelligence. This analysis delves into the core of this breakdown, examining its causes, consequences, and the emerging strategies designed to navigate a world where the primary source of vulnerability data can no longer be trusted.
The Cracks in the Foundation
A Dangerous Single Point of Failure
The most significant structural weakness in the global vulnerability management ecosystem is its fragile dependence on a single, government-backed entity. The near-crisis in April 2025, when US federal funding for the MITRE Corporation’s CVE program was suddenly jeopardized, acted as a severe “wake-up call” for the entire cybersecurity sector. This event starkly illuminated what industry experts have long feared: a precarious “single point of failure.” It laid bare the inherent instability of a framework where global vulnerability intelligence is contingent upon the political and budgetary whims of one nation’s government. João Oliveira of Checkmarx Zero identified this deep-seated reliance on US funding as the system’s most profound vulnerability, a sentiment echoed by Joe Brinkley of Cobalt, who emphasized the danger of such a centralized model. Even though the immediate funding crisis was averted, it left an indelible mark, forcing the community to confront the uncomfortable reality that the long-term sustainability and structural integrity of its primary intelligence source are far from guaranteed.
This fundamental fragility is exacerbated by a demonstrable and worsening operational collapse within the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), the program managed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) tasked with enriching CVE data. Empirical research from Sonatype provided damning evidence of this breakdown, revealing that in 2025, an astonishing 64% of disclosed open-source vulnerabilities were published without a corresponding severity score from the NVD. The analysis process itself is mired in crippling delays, with a mean lag of over six weeks between a vulnerability’s public disclosure and the assignment of a score; in some extreme cases, this delay stretched to nearly a year. This backlog is compounded by a rising tide of vulnerability reports, many of which are of low quality and demand extensive time and resources to properly analyze. For security professionals on the front lines, these protracted delays and critical data gaps translate directly into heightened “operational risk.” When the speed of remediation is the deciding factor in thwarting an attack, waiting weeks or even months for essential information like a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score or details on affected software versions directly impedes response efforts, leaving organizations dangerously exposed.
An Outdated Approach to Risk
Beyond the severe structural and operational issues, the entire system is anchored to an increasingly obsolete methodology for assessing real-world risk. The deep-seated reliance on the static CVSS base score, which provides a theoretical measure of a vulnerability’s severity, has proven to be an inadequate and often misleading indicator of actual danger. This approach fails to account for the dynamic nature of threats and the specific context of different environments. As a result, security teams are often forced to chase after high-CVSS vulnerabilities that pose little practical threat, while more dangerous, lower-scoring flaws are overlooked. This has fueled a growing consensus that the industry must pivot toward more dynamic, predictive, and context-aware risk metrics that can offer a more accurate reflection of the threat landscape. The current system’s inability to evolve beyond its foundational scoring mechanism represents a critical failure to adapt to the sophisticated tactics of modern adversaries, who actively seek out and exploit weaknesses that traditional scoring might deem less severe.
In stark contrast to the static nature of CVSS, the Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS) has emerged as a leading alternative, representing a significant leap forward in risk-based prioritization. Developed by a diverse volunteer group, EPSS functions proactively, using machine learning to analyze a vast array of data points and calculate the probability that a specific vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. This predictive capability offers security teams a powerful tool to focus their limited resources on the flaws that are most likely to be weaponized by attackers. This stands in sharp contrast to the US government’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, a purely reactive tool that only lists vulnerabilities after they have already been actively exploited, often too late to prevent widespread damage. Despite the widespread acceptance of EPSS as a new standard for effective prioritization, the CVE and NVD programs have conspicuously failed to integrate it into their enrichment process, choosing instead to cling to the outdated and far less effective CVSS and KEV indicators, further widening the gap between the official vulnerability data and the reality of cyber threats.
Forging a New, Resilient Ecosystem
A Call for Reform and Decentralization
The confluence of structural fragility, operational paralysis, and an outdated risk philosophy has made one thing abundantly clear: the centralized, US-centric CVE/NVD model is no longer fit for its intended purpose. It has become a bottleneck rather than an enabler of effective security, leaving the global community to grapple with a stream of intelligence that is consistently incomplete, significantly delayed, and often inaccurate. The direct consequence is a hindered ability for organizations to effectively prioritize and remediate the most critical threats, creating a window of opportunity for attackers to exploit known but unassessed vulnerabilities. This persistent state of crisis has served as a powerful catalyst, driving a concerted effort to fundamentally overhaul the entire vulnerability intelligence infrastructure and build a system better suited for the complexities and pace of the modern digital world. The industry is now at a critical inflection point, moving away from a single source of truth toward a more robust and distributed future.
In response to these systemic failings, a multi-pronged path forward is beginning to coalesce, defined by two major movements: reform and decentralization. The first initiative, championed by groups like The CVE Foundation, focuses on fundamental funding and governance reform. The objective is to evolve the CVE program from a US-centric operation into a more independent and globally representative body, insulated from the political and financial uncertainties of a single government sponsor. The second, and arguably more transformative, movement is the definitive shift toward a decentralized and federated ecosystem of vulnerability databases. Several powerful alternatives are already gaining significant traction, including Google’s Open Source Vulnerabilities (OSV) database and the GitHub Advisory Database, both of which offer more timely and automated data. Furthermore, nation-specific databases in the European Union, Japan, and China are emerging as key regional players. Of particular note is the Global CVE Allocation System (GCVE), an EU-led initiative explicitly designed to provide a decentralized alternative and systematically reduce the world’s reliance on the US system. While these are currently viewed as supplements, their rapid emergence signals an irreversible trend away from a monopolistic model.
Practical Strategies for Modern Defense
For organizations struggling to navigate this flawed and uncertain landscape, the consensus among security experts is unequivocal: continuing to rely solely on the CVE/NVD as a primary source of truth is an unsound and increasingly risky strategy. Effective vulnerability management in the current era demands a far more sophisticated and proactive posture. This involves actively leveraging multiple data sources—including commercial threat intelligence, open-source databases like OSV, and vendor-specific advisories—to construct a more complete, accurate, and timely picture of potential threats. Critically, organizations must integrate modern, predictive metrics like EPSS into their prioritization workflows. This allows security teams to move beyond assessing the theoretical severity of a flaw and instead focus on the tangible likelihood of exploitation. For most enterprises, the most practical path forward involves adopting vendor-enriched vulnerability management platforms that automatically aggregate, correlate, and analyze data from this diverse array of sources, providing the context-rich intelligence needed for rapid and effective decision-making.
Ultimately, this new reality necessitated a fundamental shift in the security mindset across the industry. As emphasized by experts like Shane Fry of RunSafe Security, organizations had to accept the hard truth that perfect, real-time vulnerability visibility would likely remain an unattainable goal. This acceptance drove investment in proactive security controls and runtime protections designed to prevent the exploitation of vulnerabilities even before a CVE is published or a patch becomes available. The “assume breach” mentality, once a niche concept, became a mainstream strategic principle. This proactive posture, combined with a diversified intelligence strategy that no longer placed blind faith in a single database, represented the most resilient path forward. The industry had learned that in a world where its primary vulnerability intelligence system could no longer be fully trusted, the responsibility for defense had to shift from reactive patching to proactive prevention.
