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Cybersecurity vocabulary · Vulnerabilities and Patching

CVSS

Meaning in cybersecurity, with examples

abbreviationAdvanced term

In cybersecurity, CVSS means: Common Vulnerability Scoring System: a standard method for rating how severe a vulnerability is, with a score from 0.0 to 10.0.

In Turkish: CVSS puanı, Ortak Zafiyet Puanlama Sistemi

How it is used

Scores map to ratings: low (0.1–3.9), medium (4.0–6.9), high (7.0–8.9) and critical (9.0–10.0). People say 'a CVSS score of 9.8'. It is maintained by FIRST; version 4.0 was published in 2023, but many sources still show 3.1 scores.

Example sentences

  1. The flaw has a CVSS score of 9.8, so it goes to the top of the list.

  2. Our policy uses CVSS ratings to set patch deadlines.

Common collocations

  • CVSS score
  • CVSS base score
  • CVSS vector
  • CVSS v4
  • CVECommon Vulnerabilities and Exposures: a public catalogue that gives each publicly known vulnerability a unique ID, such as CVE-2021-44228.
  • vulnerabilityA weakness in software, hardware, a configuration or a process that an attacker could use to cause harm or to gain access they should not have.
  • patch managementThe ongoing process of finding, testing, approving and installing software updates across all systems, and tracking which ones are still missing.
  • riskThe chance that a threat will use a weakness and cause harm, combined with how serious that harm would be for the organisation.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Vulnerabilities and Patching

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