Part 2: From Overwhelmed to Proactive: Integrating EPSS into Your Cybersecurity Strategy

Making Data-Driven Prioritization a Reality

Adopting the Exploit Prediction Scoring System is not just about knowing what EPSS is – it’s about weaving those predictive insights into the fabric of your cybersecurity operations. Many organizations understand the concept of risk-based vulnerability management in theory, but struggle with execution. As an executive or security leader, how do you actually integrate EPSS scores into your team’s day-to-day decision-making so that it genuinely improves outcomes? In this guide, we’ll walk through a practical roadmap to help you move from an overwhelmed, reactive posture to a focused and proactive strategy using EPSS as a key tool.

Consider how vulnerability prioritization typically works without EPSS: teams might debate whether to tackle a high-severity issue on a minor system or a medium-severity flaw on a mission-critical server, often with incomplete information. EPSS cuts through this ambiguity by highlighting the vulnerabilities most likely to be exploited now. That means your remediation meetings shift from guessing to knowing – instead of arguing over which “critical” bug to fix first, your team can say, “This vulnerability has a 20% chance of being exploited in the next 30 days, so it tops our list.” The result is a more confident, data-driven prioritization process.

Let’s explore how to bring that transformation about, step by step.

Step 1: Ensure Access to EPSS Data

First, you need the EPSS scores at your fingertips. Fortunately, EPSS data is open and readily available. Many modern security tools already include EPSS scores in their dashboards or reports (your vulnerability scanner or threat management platform may have an EPSS column). Check if your existing tools support it; if not, consider reaching out to your vendors or using the free EPSS datasets published by the EPSS team. The data is updated daily, so whichever way you access it, plan for regular updates – perhaps automating a daily import into your vulnerability management system. The key is to treat EPSS scores as a standard field attached to each new vulnerability, just like CVSS score or asset information.

As a leader, you don’t need to crunch the numbers yourself, but you do need to mandate that your team incorporates this data. It might be as simple as updating the report template to include an “EPSS Probability” column next to each listed vulnerability. That one change visibly signals to everyone: “Likelihood of exploit is now part of our consideration.”

Step 2: Set Risk-Based Thresholds

With EPSS data in hand, decide how you’ll act on it. Establish clear criteria for what EPSS score triggers urgent remediation versus normal patch timing. For example, you might declare that any vulnerability with an EPSS probability above 5% must be fixed within 48 hours, 1–5% within one week, and anything lower can follow standard schedules. There’s no magic number – your thresholds should align with your organization’s risk appetite and resources. The key is to set concrete rules so that when a vulnerability appears with a high EPSS, everyone knows it’s go-time.

Figure: Using EPSS helps focus effort. In this illustrative chart, higher thresholds (left side) mean fewer vulnerabilities to remediate (lower effort) but risk missing some exploits, while lower thresholds (right side) increase workload. The goal is to find a sweet spot where you remediate a manageable number of vulnerabilities while catching the vast majority of those likely to be exploited (Introducing Exploit Prediction Scoring System v4 | Empirical Security). By defining your EPSS threshold(s) upfront, you ensure consistency and avoid case-by-case guesswork.

By setting these thresholds upfront, you empower your team to act decisively. When a new batch of vulnerability scan results comes in, they can immediately flag, say, five items that exceed your EPSS cut-off. Those become the “must fix now” list, without endless debate. Clarity in criteria translates to speed in remediation.

Step 3: Add Context with Asset Criticality

EPSS tells you the likelihood of exploit, but you also need to consider where that vulnerability lives. Not all systems are equally critical. Encourage your team to overlay EPSS data with asset importance. A 3% likelihood on a server holding patient records may deserve more urgent attention than a 10% likelihood on a lab test machine. Many vulnerability management tools let you tag asset criticality – use that to filter and focus. In practice, this means high EPSS vulnerabilities on high-value systems go to the top of the pile, while a high EPSS on a trivial system or a low EPSS on a critical system can be prioritized accordingly. By combining exploit probability with impact, you ensure you’re addressing the issues that pose the greatest actual risk to the business.

Step 4: Integrate EPSS into Workflow and Communication

Now it’s time to bake EPSS into your operational processes. Update your vulnerability management playbooks and ticketing workflows to include EPSS-based prioritization. For instance, when the security team opens a remediation ticket for IT or development teams, include the EPSS score and a note if it’s above your urgent threshold. This provides context for why a fix may need to be expedited, even if the technical severity (CVSS) isn’t the highest. It helps non-security stakeholders understand the urgency – “We’re fast-tracking this patch because there’s a 1 in 5 chance this bug will be exploited soon, according to global data,” is a powerful explanation.

Regular meetings or reports should also highlight EPSS. You might introduce a weekly “EPSS Top 10” list – the ten vulnerabilities in your environment with the highest EPSS probabilities – and review status on those specifically. Over time, your IT teams will start anticipating that anything on that list is going to get lots of attention, which aligns everyone’s focus.

Also consider adjusting your KPIs and metrics. Instead of measuring success only by number of vulnerabilities closed or average CVSS of open findings, add metrics like “% of vulnerabilities above 1% EPSS addressed within SLA” or “average EPSS of open vulnerabilities.” These metrics can help demonstrate how well you’re addressing the most likely threats. Including such data in executive reports highlights that you’re lowering the probability of breach, not just ticking boxes.

Step 5: Educate and Empower Your Team

Even the best process won’t succeed without team buy-in. Make sure your security and IT teams understand what EPSS is and why you’re using it. Emphasize that this approach is about working smarter, not harder – focusing limited effort on the vulnerabilities that matter most. Often, when engineers realize they’re fixing issues that genuinely pose danger (as shown by real-world data), it boosts their morale. Share any early wins to reinforce this: for example, if you patched a vulnerability due to a high EPSS score and later news confirmed attackers exploiting it elsewhere, let the team know their work prevented a potential incident. These stories build confidence in the EPSS-driven method.

EPSS in Action: Tribal Casino Case

A tribal casino provides a useful illustration of EPSS integration. The casino’s security team was drowning in vulnerability reports for their gaming systems, hotel networks, and corporate network. By introducing EPSS into their process, they achieved a dramatic improvement in focus:

They began pulling EPSS scores into their vulnerability scanner and set clear thresholds: any vulnerability with an EPSS probability above 2% had to be fixed within 72 hours, those between 0.5% and 2% within a week, and the rest in normal cycles. This approach immediately narrowed their urgent list to a handful of issues. For instance, a moderate-severity flaw in a casino database application carried an EPSS of around 10% – even though its CVSS score wasn’t sky-high, the team treated it as critical and patched it within a day. A few weeks later, that same flaw appeared in a report of attacks on casinos, confirming they had prioritized correctly.

By embedding EPSS into ticketing and alerts, the casino ensured any high-EPSS vulnerability triggered immediate action, rather than waiting for a monthly review. After a quarter, the results were evident: they had remediated fewer total vulnerabilities than before, but importantly, they addressed nearly all the ones that actually posed a threat. The security staff reported feeling less overwhelmed and more confident that they were fixing the right problems. In short, EPSS helped the organization work smarter and avert likely attacks without expending unnecessary effort on unlikely ones.

Dealing with Edge Cases and Challenges

Integrating EPSS isn’t without its questions. You might encounter scenarios that test the limits of the model or the process. For instance, what if a vulnerability has a low EPSS score, but your security engineer insists it’s a critical issue due to some insider knowledge (maybe they read on a private forum that attackers are testing it, even if wider data hasn’t caught up)? The guidance should be: use EPSS as a guide, not an absolute dictate. In any given situation, if your team has specific insight or there are other risk factors, you can and should deviate from the EPSS-based priority. EPSS augments human judgment; it doesn’t replace it. Encourage a dialogue in those weekly meetings: if someone argues for addressing a low-EPSS issue sooner, hear them out and weigh the reasons. The model doesn’t have your organization’s proprietary context – for example, maybe that low-scoring vulnerability is in a very sensitive application of yours that absolutely must not fail. In that case, treat it with higher priority because the impact side of the risk equation dominates.

Another edge case: vulnerabilities that explode in exploitation overnight. Perhaps today a flaw has a negligible EPSS score, and tomorrow a hacker group releases a widely used exploit kit for it – meaning its probability of exploit skyrockets. EPSS will catch up quickly (daily updates), but there’s always a lag. This is where having an ear on threat intelligence channels complements EPSS. If you hear breaking news of an exploit in the wild, don’t wait for tomorrow’s EPSS update to act. Consider that effectively a high-EPSS situation, even if the number hasn’t updated yet. In practice, this is similar to how we treat emergency out-of-band patches today: when credible intel of active exploitation emerges, drop everything and respond. EPSS is built on that same data, so it will validate your response by spiking the score shortly after.

You should also guard against over-reliance on any single metric. A pitfall would be to ignore common sense and standard security hygiene just because something has a low EPSS. For example, if a critical server is missing a patch for a vulnerability that “only” has a 0.2% score, that’s still not good practice. EPSS helps schedule your work, but it’s not a reason to ignore vulnerabilities indefinitely. Eventually, you do want to close even the low-risk gaps (especially on mission-critical systems) once higher-risk items are taken care of. Think of it like triage in an emergency room: you tend to the most urgent cases first, but you’ll still treat the minor injuries when time permits.

A Proactive Posture Across the Organization

When done right, integrating EPSS leads to a significant mindset shift. Your security team moves from constantly reacting to looking ahead and anticipating likely attack paths. As an executive, you’ll notice the conversation changing: risk discussions become more concrete because you can explain why certain issues were tackled first (“This vulnerability had a high exploitation probability, so we patched it immediately”). This data-backed narrative shows that your organization is not just fixing bugs, but actively focusing on the most probable threats – a stance that inspires confidence in stakeholders and regulators alike.

By adopting EPSS, you’re aligning your defense efforts with the real-world threat landscape. Instead of saying, “We hope we patched everything important,” you can say, “We prioritized and addressed the vulnerabilities most likely to be used against us, and we’ll keep adjusting as new data comes in.” That is a powerful position to be in. In a world of daily emerging threats, such agility and focus can make the difference between business as usual and the next big incident.