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Prioritizing Vulnerability Response: A Stakeholder-Specific Vulnerability Categorization (Version 2.0)

April 2021 White Paper
Jonathan Spring, Allen D. Householder, Eric Hatleback, Art Manion, Madison Oliver, Vijay S. Sarvepalli, Laurie Tyzenhaus, Charles G. Yarbrough

This paper presents version 2.0 of a testable Stakeholder-Specific Vulnerability Categorization (SSVC) that takes the form of decision trees and that avoids some problems with the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).

Publisher:

Software Engineering Institute

Abstract

The Stakeholder-specific Vulnerability Categorization (SSVC) is a system for prioritizing actions during vulnerability management. SSVC aims to avoid one-size-fits-all solutions in favor of a modular decision-making system with clearly defined and tested parts that vulnerability managers can select and use as appropriate to their context.

Version 2 improves on Version 1.1 (https://weis2020.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2020/06/weis20-final6.pdf) with the addition of the coordinator stakeholder perspective, improvements to terminology, integration of feedback on decision point definitions, and tools to support practical use.