Single Point of Failure - Lessons from the CVE Funding Scare

What almost symbolized a late April fool’s joke was a real system check. The recent CVE funding near-miss wasn’t just word. You listened to the story: MITRE’s contract might get pulled, CISA stepped in with an extension (details here), and MITRE found some cash to keep the lights on (Brian Krebs covered it in detail). Crisis averted? Only superficially.

However, focusing only on the immediate funding issue misses the point. The real takeaway isn’t just about government contracts. It’s about a hidden assumption the entire cybersecurity world has made: that a single, centralized, government-funded list is the right way to handle global vulnerability data. This near-miss just ripped the curtain off that assumption.

For anyone managing security, this should feel uncomfortable. Why? Because relying solely on CVE/NVD means you’ve effectively outsourced a critical part of your threat assessment. You’re waiting for someone else to tell you what’s broken and how bad it is. When that single source hiccups – like the NVD backlog issues (SecurityWeek touched on this) or this funding scare, you’re suddenly flying blind.

The obvious problems cascade from there. Delayed intelligence means delayed patching. Difficulty prioritizing means you might fix the trivial stuff while the real danger lurks. Your expensive security tools? They become less effective if their core data feed is unreliable (as Industrial Cyber noted).

The solution isn’t just hoping the funding gods are kind next time. We have to take back control.

First, something that helps is looking beyond just one source for our vulnerability information. It may seem simple, but it’s a valuable reminder to actively seek out diverse perspectives. Bringing in data from commercial feeds, vendor advisories, and open sources is more than just a ‘nice-to-have.’ From my perspective, which is pretty much based on my role as a Chief Information Security Officer, the solid risk management feels fundamental. What would you do if you planned a bigger project? You would get multiple opinions to build your own picture of the situation in front of you.

So, second, get better at judging yourself. Don’t just react blindly to a CVSS score. It’s just a number, a generic starting point derived without knowing your specific compensating controls or the actual business value of the potentially affected asset. What truly matters is understanding what that vulnerability means to you, right here, in your specific environment. You need to ask the hard questions: Does it affect a genuinely critical system that underpins core revenue or operations or something isolated on the periphery? Is it exploitable given your network segmentation and security posture, or is it theoretically possible in a lab? Is there credible, active chatter about exploits targeting systems like yours in the wild, or is it still just a researcher’s proof-of-concept?

Answering these requires real internal intelligence, actively connecting the dots between the vulnerability alert, your detailed asset inventory, threat feeds relevant to your sector, and a solid grasp of potential business impact. It’s the difference between passively consuming external feeds and actively synthesizing information to understand your organization’s specific risk exposure.

Third, pay attention to alternatives. Systems like CIRCL’s GCVE may be part of the future. The industry may need to increase. The point is, we should not assume the current model is immutable.

*** Update ***: The EU already got an alternative. The ENISA opened their own Vulnerability Database: https://euvd.enisa.europa.eu/