CISOs are dealing with an overload of vulnerability data. Each year brings tens of thousands of new CVEs, yet only a small fraction ever become weaponized. Teams often fall back on CVSS scores, which label thousands of flaws as “high” or “critical” but fail to show which ones actually matter. The result is wasted effort, long patch backlogs, and exploitable weaknesses left in production.
Traditional approaches have left security leaders with what Jeff Gouge, CISO at Nucleus Security, calls “a false sense of urgency on many fronts.” According to him, over 95 percent of CVSS high scores are never exploited. That leaves teams spending resources patching issues that pose little real risk while attackers move against a much smaller set of vulnerabilities that slip through.
A different approach to threat intelligence
Nucleus Security’s new product, Nucleus Insights, is designed to address this gap by combining AI-driven threat intelligence with analyst validation. Instead of giving vulnerability teams another generic feed, Insights focuses specifically on CVEs. It collects signals from exploit repositories, dark web forums, malware reports, and vendor advisories, then uses AI and analysts to determine which vulnerabilities are being exploited or are likely to be soon.
The end result is a daily threat rating that can be fed directly into existing workflows, from ticketing to SLA enforcement. The goal is to replace guesswork with a signal that prioritizes the vulnerabilities most likely to be used in attacks.
Evidence from the field
Gouge points to concrete outcomes from early adopters. One state government agency that adopted Nucleus Insights was able to cut its volume of high-risk vulnerabilities by 50 percent within three months. By focusing only on vulnerabilities with active threats, the agency avoided chasing thousands of CVSS “highs” that attackers were unlikely to touch.
Automation also made a difference. According to Gouge, the manual effort spent on vulnerability triage dropped by 80 percent once Insights was in place. Tickets for critical vulnerabilities were automatically created in the agency’s ITSM system and routed to the right team with SLAs attached. This shift reduced toil and kept teams focused on remediation. The streamlined process not only cut backlog but also helped the agency earn a 20 percent reduction in its cyber insurance premium, a direct financial benefit tied to lower risk exposure.
Another example comes from an enterprise environment with roughly six million findings. By applying context filters from Nucleus Insights, which combine business criticality with evidence of active threats, the number of vulnerabilities flagged as truly at risk dropped to 389. That smaller, actionable list allowed the team to focus immediately on what mattered most. Gouge said this approach translated into mean-time-to-remediate moving from months to weeks or even days for critical exploits.
Precision over volume
Customer pilots show that Nucleus Insights is hitting the right signals. Gouge said that 70 to 80 percent of the vulnerabilities the system flags as top priority end up being exploited or actively weaponized within 30 to 60 days. By comparison, CVSS-driven prioritization often inverts the picture. “Only a tiny fraction of the issues treated as urgent with CVSS actually correspond to something being exploited,” Gouge explained.
The difference lies in precision. With Nucleus Insights, teams spend less time on noise and more time addressing the small fraction of vulnerabilities that represent danger.
Turning process into outcomes
For many organizations, the advantage lies not just in the threat intelligence itself but in how it integrates with existing workflows. In the state agency example, automation routed tickets, enforced SLAs, and handled approvals, turning vulnerability management into a process that could scale. For one enterprise customer, Gouge said that automation triggered by Insights allowed them to patch a critical vulnerability in under 48 hours, which later proved to be the same weakness exploited in a major breach at another company.
Closing the gap
For CISOs, the case for new tools often comes down to demonstrable outcomes. Gouge points to shorter MTTR, fewer open high-risk vulnerabilities, and better SLA compliance as evidence that the approach delivers. “By zeroing in on the small fraction of vulnerabilities that pose real danger, Nucleus Insights lets teams remediate faster and avoid letting exploitable holes sit open in production,” he said.
The broader lesson is that vulnerability management is about patching the right things faster. Early results suggest that focusing on real-world exploitability can save money and staff hours. For security leaders under pressure to show measurable value, that is an outcome worth noting.
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