For years, I watched organizations treat vulnerability data like a compliance chore. It was something to scan, sort and patch against deadlines. Yet buried in those reports is a treasure map of sorts, where an attacker is likely to strike first. In my previous red team and incident responder roles, minus a credential leak or insider threat, every attack was perpetrated through a vulnerability. This perspective guided me in developing this strategy. Every CVE represents not just a weakness but an opportunity to understand behavior, exposure and intent. When my teams began connecting vulnerability management with threat hunting, we turned static lists into dynamic intelligence.
Vulnerability-informed hunting is where risk management meets detection engineering. By using vulnerability data to guide hunts and fill gaps in visibility, we can expose ongoing compromise, prioritize detection work where it matters and continuously refine logging and monitoring. With every step in the process, previously loathed compliance audits turned into adversary-seeking missiles. For me, it has become the operational bridge between theory and practice. This is the nexus of risk and intelligence.
Vulnerabilities as a lens, not a list
Early in my career, vulnerability scans were treated as checklists. Systems were scanned, findings sorted by CVSS score and teams rushed to patch the critical ones. The result was tactical busy work with little operational insight. I learned that a better approach is to treat vulnerabilities as behavioral indicators, signs of where adversaries can or already do operate.
