In today’s threat landscape, the sheer volume of vulnerabilities can paralyze even the most mature security teams. Traditional vulnerability management tools spit out thousands of findings ranked by CVSS score, yet many of the “critical” items are theoretical at best and rarely exploited in the real world. Meanwhile, the misconfigurations that attackers actually weaponize—things like SMB or LDAP signing not enforced—often get buried as “Medium” or “Informational” risks. We’ve seen this pattern repeatedly across enterprises: the scanner says you’re mostly fine, then a real attacker escalates privileges through a relay attack no one prioritized.
At NR Labs, we refused to accept that status quo. Our Cyber Innovation Team built a fundamentally different approach—one that starts with the question every CISO should be asking: “Which of these findings can an actual adversary chain together into a breach of our crown jewels?”
Our vulnerability management program doesn’t begin with CVSS or vendor severity. It begins with real-world attack paths.
Take the classic example that still keeps us up at night: Tenable (and most scanners) will flag “SMB signing not required” or “LDAP signing not required” as Medium. Yet in the hands of a moderately skilled attacker, those settings are the cornerstone of an entire class of NTLM relay attacks that lead to domain compromise. We map every finding against the techniques adversaries are actively using—think MITRE ATT&CK chained together into realistic intrusion sequences—then prioritize accordingly.
We call this Attack Path Prioritization (because “kill chain” is overused and honestly a bit dated). The result? Your team stops wasting months chasing CVE noise and starts fixing the handful of issues that would actually let someone become Domain Admin in a weekend.
A prioritized list is only half the battle. The second half is proving—beyond theoretical debate—that the remediation actually stops the attack.
That’s why clients who opt for our Vulnerability Management + Continuous Penetration Testing (CPT) service (or a dedicated CPT retainer) get Continuous Targeted Penetration Testing woven into the program. As soon as a high-priority issue is patched, our red team immediately attempts to exploit it using the exact TTPs seen in real breaches. No more “trust but verify.” We verify on day one. The outcome speaks for itself: the majority of our CPT customers fully remediate their critical attack paths before the next testing cycle even begins.
Any vendor can send you a PDF full of findings. Very few can pick up the phone at 2 a.m. when your team is debating whether a specific LDAP channel binding policy breaks a legacy app—and give you an immediate, authoritative answer grounded in intimate knowledge of your environment.
Because we live in your systems month after month—watching processes, understanding business context, mapping internal trust relationships—we become an extension of your team. Your analysts stop burning days (or weeks) researching edge cases. Your CISO gets clear, defensible remediation priorities instead of generic “patch everything high and critical” advice. And your technical staff finally gets guidance from people who have seen these exact issues across dozens of similar enterprises and already know what actually works.
We built this program for organizations that have budget to invest in real security outcomes, but not unlimited budget to throw at endless scanning tools and shelf-ware. If you’re tired of explaining to your board why you have 400 open critical vulnerabilities yet still feel exposed, we should talk.
Most vulnerability management programs optimize for volume. NR Labs optimizes for impact.By combining attack-path-driven prioritization with continuous, targeted penetration testing (for clients who choose that path) and always-available expertise, we help organizations finally answer the question that matters most: “Are we actually secure against the attacks that are happening right now?”
If you’re ready to move from vulnerability theater to measurable, adversary-resistant maturity, the NR Labs Cyber Innovation Team is here to make it happen.
Reach out. Your attackers already have.— The NR Labs Cyber Innovation Team
