The 2025 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) highlights a concerning 34% year-over-year increase in vulnerability exploitation, now present in 20% of all breaches. Tenable Research’s collaboration with Verizon provides critical insights into remediation trends for 17 high-risk edge device vulnerabilities, revealing significant disparities in patch deployment across industries. This analysis combines findings from the DBIR with supplemental threat intelligence to examine the current state of vulnerability management in enterprise networks.
Key Findings from the 2025 Threat Landscape
The cybersecurity landscape continues to evolve with ransomware and extortion accounting for 32% of breaches, while vulnerability exploitation has surged by 180% compared to 2024. Edge devices and VPNs have become prime targets, representing 22% of CVE-related breaches in the 2025 report – a dramatic increase from just 3% in 2024. The median time to exploit CISA-listed vulnerabilities has shrunk to just 5 days, while organizations take an average of 55 days to remediate critical flaws.
Tenable’s analysis of 160 million data points reveals stark differences in remediation times across sectors. The 17 examined CVEs affect critical infrastructure components from major vendors including Cisco, Citrix, Fortinet, Ivanti, Juniper Networks, Palo Alto Networks, and SonicWall. Each vulnerability was added to CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog in 2024, indicating active exploitation in the wild.
Critical Edge Device Vulnerabilities
The following table summarizes the 17 high-priority CVEs analyzed in the DBIR report, including their CVSS and VPR scores:
| CVE | Description | CVSSv3 | VPR |
|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2024-20359 | Cisco ASA/FTD Local Code Execution | 6.0 | 6.7 |
| CVE-2023-6548 | Citrix NetScaler ADC/Gateway RCE | 8.8 | 7.4 |
| CVE-2023-48788 | FortiClientEMS SQL Injection | 9.8 | 9.4 |
| CVE-2024-3400 | Palo Alto PAN-OS Command Injection | 10.0 | 10.0 |
Sector-Specific Remediation Patterns
Analysis of remediation times reveals significant variations across industries. The government sector showed surprisingly fast patching for Cisco’s CVE-2024-20359 (116 days), while education and energy sectors took considerably longer. Fortinet’s CVE-2023-48788 saw remarkably quick response in telecommunications (12 days) compared to healthcare (71 days).
Ivanti vulnerabilities demonstrated the worst remediation rates, with even the fastest industries taking over 260 days to patch CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887. In contrast, Fortinet’s “FortiJump” vulnerability (CVE-2024-47575) saw average remediation times under one week across all sectors.
Emerging Threats and Recommendations
The 2025 threat landscape introduces new challenges including AI-enhanced attacks and quantum computing risks. The report identifies several critical emerging vulnerabilities including CVE-2025-32433 (Erlang/OTP RCE) and CVE-2025-25467 (libx264 memory corruption).
Key recommendations from the analysis include:
- Prioritize patching for CISA KEV catalog vulnerabilities
- Implement strict authentication controls for remote access systems
- Conduct third-party risk assessments for supply chain vulnerabilities
- Develop incident response plans specific to edge device compromises
Conclusion
The 2025 DBIR findings demonstrate that while vulnerability exploitation continues to rise, remediation times remain unacceptably long for many critical systems. Edge devices have become particularly attractive targets due to their network positioning and often delayed patching cycles. Organizations must adapt their vulnerability management programs to address these high-risk systems with greater urgency, particularly when vulnerabilities appear on the CISA KEV catalog.
