Why the CVE Funding Crisis is a Wake-Up Call for Cyber Resilience

By Ryan Knisley, Chief Product Strategist, Axonius

This week’s news that MITRE’s CVE Program funding was potentially at risk, points to not just a strong focus on vulnerability management but a renewed drive on cyber resilience. Frankly, it couldn’t come at a more pivotal time for the cybersecurity community. For over two decades, the CVE system has been the connective tissue between security teams, technology vendors, and defenders everywhere. It’s how we collectively name, track, and prioritize vulnerabilities. In a world of fragmented data, the CVE program was one unified attempt at driving clarity and alignment across data silos. If that coordination breaks down, the consequences ripple across every industry.

At Axonius, our position is clear: visibility and context must be the foundation of every security program — especially when trusted systems face uncertainty. Our data pipeline and focus on aggregation, correlation, and enrichment are critical in avoiding single points of failure and on truly driving the right data as the source of truth for security, IT, and compliance professionals.

The CVE System Isn’t Just About IDs — It’s About Alignment

Most people think of CVEs as a list of vulnerability identifiers. But in practice, the CVE system provides a lingua franca — a shared language that allows vulnerability scanners, patching systems, SIEMs, and CMDBs to speak to each other. It helps security teams act fast and with confidence. When that foundation is shaken, the rest of the process becomes more fragmented and reactive.

This is where Axonius plays a crucial role. Even if the CVE ecosystem becomes less predictable, asset visibility, vulnerability context, and response workflows shouldn’t grind to a halt.

Visibility Turns Uncertainty into Action

One of the core problems with a potential CVE disruption is that it increases uncertainty. Without a central, trusted registry, how do you know what matters? How do you separate a one-off bug from a widespread threat?

For most of the security industry, the CVE system has always been a primary signal. But for Axonius customers, it’s just one of many. Our platform connects to dozens of data sources — including vulnerability scanners, CMDBs, EDR, ITAM, threat intelligence, and more — to deliver a complete, contextual view of exposures and risk. So when one source has an issue, you don’t lose visibility, you don’t lose actionability, and most importantly, you don’t lose time. Trust in the data allows you to act confidently to remediate or proactively protect. Whether CVEs continue under MITRE or transition to a new model, customers still need to know:

• What do I have?

• Where is it?

• Is it exposed?

• Does it matter to my business?

Our job is to help organizations answer those questions continuously and at scale. Whether vulnerability data comes from CVEs, vendor advisories, or emerging threat intel sources, Axonius customers are able to act on what’s relevant, not just react to what’s urgent.

A Changing Landscape Demands Resilience

While we have no control over the funding or future of CVE, we do control how we help customers adapt. At Axonius, we’re already working on how to integrate emerging sources of vulnerability intelligence, enrich asset data with broader context, and give teams the flexibility to handle disruption without slowing down.

If the CVE system is weakened or fragmented, it reinforces what we’ve always believed: the best defense isn’t just knowing which vulnerabilities exist — it’s knowing how they apply to your environment, and being able to act accordingly. It also underscores a core principle we’ve built into our platform from day one: never becoming fully dependent on a single database or system of record. In cybersecurity, resilience means building with optionality, and combining data from multiple systems to build a system of truth — so when one source falters, your ability to see, prioritize, and act doesn’t.

Actionability isn’t about where your data comes from, it’s about what you can do with it. And that’s where Axonius delivers value — giving customers the confidence to not just see what’s happening in their environment, but take decisive action — no matter what changes around us. 

—Ryan Knisley is the Chief Product Strategist at Axonius, where he leads product strategy, innovation, and execution for the cybersecurity asset management platform trusted by the world’s most secure organizations.