James: Welcome to the Deep Dive! Today, we’re jumping into something that, well, for a lot of security leaders, it’s probably causing some sleepless nights. I mean, the sheer pace of cyber threats today is just dizzying. It really is. Just think about this. 2024 alone saw roughly 40,000 new CVEs logged.
Katie: 40,000?
James: Yeah, that’s a 38% jump from the year before. It’s staggering.
Katie: It absolutely is. And numbers like that, they’re not just stats, are they?
James: No, they signal something bigger, a real shift.
Katie: Right. It tells you that trying to patch at human speed against threats moving at machine speed, well, it’s fast becoming a losing game.
James: Are usual ways—the whole find‑and‑patch thing—suddenly feels kind of outdated, obsolete maybe?
Katie: Yeah, obsolete is a good word. And it feeds that feeling, that sense of always being on the back foot, you know?
James: Definitely.
Katie: There was a CSO Online survey recently and one finding really jumped out at me.
James: Oh yeah. What was that?
Katie: Get this. 73% of CISOs admitted that incidents in the past year came from assets they didn’t even know they had.
James: Wow. 73%. Unknown assets.
Katie: Exactly. You can’t protect what you can’t see, let alone patch it fast enough when you’re drowning in vulnerabilities.
James: That 73% is just… So, okay, how do we start to turn this around? How do we stop just reacting all the time and actually, you know, prevent these attacks?
Katie: Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to get into in this deep dive.
James: Good.
Katie: We’re unpacking a really practical strategic approach. It’s called Preemptive Exposure Management, PEM for short.
James: PEM.
Katie: Think of it like a blueprint maybe. There’s something designed to bring together continuous discovery, risk‑based validation—and this is key—automated remediation.
James: So the core idea is getting rid of the exposures before the bad guys can find them.
Katie: Precisely. Before they even get a sniff.
James: Okay. I like the sound of that.
Katie: So our mission today for this deep dive is pretty clear. We want to unpack why PEM is so critical right now.
James: Makes sense.
Katie: And how it actually builds on, maybe even supercharges, existing ideas like Continuous Threat Exposure Management, CTEM.
James: Ah, CTEM. OK, so how do they relate?
Katie: Exactly. And then the practical steps. What can you, listening right now, actually do to start embedding PEM? We use recent data, some Gartner guidance, real-world examples, and try to make it really concrete.
James: Perfect. So let’s start with that urgency. We’ve got the exploding CVEs, the unknown assets. But why is this shift to being preemptive so unavoidable like right now? What’s pushing it?
Katie: Well, first, you hit it already. The sheer overwhelming volume, that 40,000 number for 2024. Yeah. What’s kind of mind‑blowing is that single year makes up 15% of all CVEs ever disclosed.
James: 17%.
Katie: In one year.
James: Ever. It just hammers home the scale of what security teams are facing.
Katie: Yeah.
James: Just trying to keep treading water.
Katie: And it’s not just the number, is it? It’s what the attackers are doing now, especially with AI in the mix. What worries you most there?
James: That’s the other massive piece. AI is absolutely supercharging the offense. We’re seeing research like from Dark Reading, highlighting automated phishing kits.
Katie: Yeah, those are getting scarily good. Right. And deep‑fake lures, LLM‑generated malware. These aren’t just theoretical things anymore. They’re actively shortening attacker dwell times—how long they need inside a network—and widening the victim pool so fast that human response times just, they can’t cope.
James: Can’t keep up.
Katie: We’re talking machine‑speed attacks. It’s a whole new ball game.
James: And that loops right back to those unknown assets, that 73% problem.
Katie: It does, because even if you’ve got a mature CTEM program, maybe you’re good at finding and prioritizing vulnerabilities. You’re likely still struggling to close that remediation gap fast enough. Right?
James: The actual fixing part.
Katie: And that is precisely the gap Preemptive Exposure Management is designed to address. To shrink those gaps right down—ideally to zero.
James: OK. And you mentioned analysts are picking up on this. Gartner.
Katie: Yeah, the momentum is definitely building there. Gartner’s 2025 Emerging Tech note — “Build Preemptive Security Solutions to Improve Threat Detection (Part 2)” — positions PEM as “a progressive approach to executing exposure management” and lists Vicarius as a sample vendor. Gartner also flagged CTEM as a top strategic trend for 2024. Put those together, and preemptive discipline is no longer tech talk—it’s board-level language.
James: That’s a strong signal. So let’s define it clearly. What is Preemptive Exposure Management? How is it really different from just reacting?
Katie: The key difference is integration. Traditional vulnerability management often involves separate teams and disconnected steps. You find something, hand it off, wait for a fix.
James: Right. Lots of lift.
Katie: PEM unifies it: discovery, validation, and remediation operate in a continuous feedback loop. It can run autonomously when risk is clear—or pause for human sign-off when business context demands.
James: Sounds flexible.
Katie: It is. And one case study from The Hacker News showed how orchestrated workflows cut CVE ticketing effort by 60%, freeing analysts for higher-order work.
James: The future is now, basically. We need to match their speed.
Katie: We have to.
James: This has been incredibly insightful. OK, let’s recap the core message here. PEM, Preemptive Exposure Management. It’s not just about knowing your risk or prioritizing it.
Katie: No, it’s about erasing the risk, removing the exposure before it’s even reachable by an attacker.
James: And it does that by tightly linking discovery with automated closure, taking back the initiative.
Katie: Exactly. And the results are tangible: mean time to exploit drops from weeks to hours, low‑hanging vulnerabilities are eliminated entirely.
James: That sounds transformative.
Katie: Early adopters, especially in healthcare and finance, are reporting up to 80% faster vulnerability resolution. This isn’t incremental improvement—it’s exponential risk reduction.
James: 80% faster. That’s huge. So really, PEM isn’t just another tool. It’s a discipline, right? An operating model.
Katie: Totally. An operating model that makes prevention practical again in the face of machine‑speed threats. It lets teams reclaim the initiative, not just react.
James: Reclaim the initiative—I like that. It flips the script from defense to offense almost.
Katie: In a way, yes. It’s proactive offense against exposure.
James: So maybe a final thought for everyone listening…
Katie: Yeah, maybe this: given how fast attacks are moving and how powerful these preemptive strategies are—it begs the question: What would it really mean for your security operation to shift from reacting to proactively preventing?
James: And maybe even more pointedly
Katie: How quickly can you start embedding that preemptive mindset and action into your own operations? How fast can you start erasing risk today?
