Focus On The Vulnerabilities That Matter and Prove Why
Replace severity-based triage with reachability-driven prioritization grounded in what you actually ship. Identify which vulnerabilities are exploitable, which are not, and why, so teams can focus remediation where it matters and prove decisions with confidence.
Data Without Context = Noise
Modern products ship with thousands of components across source code, firmware, and third-party binaries. Every new release—and every new CVE—adds more findings to triage, more tickets to manage, and more pressure to respond quickly.
Most teams are forced to work around the same limitations:
- Triage is driven by severity scores, not real exploitability
- There’s no clear answer to whether vulnerable code paths are actually reachable
- “Not affected” decisions are manual, inconsistent, and difficult to defend
- Prioritization must be repeated every release, even when nothing meaningful changed
- Time is spent chasing issues that pose no real exposure, while true risk competes for attention
The result is slower response, wasted engineering effort, and uncertainty around decisions that matter most.
Reachability-driven vulnerability prioritization replaces static CVE lists with a continuous, evidence-backed workflow tied directly to shipped software.
By combining ground-truth inventory, reachability analysis, exploit context, and automated re-evaluation, you can consistently determine which vulnerabilities require action and confidently explain why others do not.
This workflow is supported by:
- A unified system of record for components and vulnerabilities
- Automated reasoning that applies prioritization logic consistently across builds
- A workflow interface that makes decisions, evidence, and status easy to review and share
How It Works
Establish a Ground-Truth Vulnerability Baseline
Start by building a vulnerability inventory grounded in what actually ships.
Ingest firmware, binaries, source code, and supplier inputs to establish a firmware-derived SBOM and correlate vulnerabilities to real products and builds, not abstract projects or repos.
What you get: A complete, accurate baseline that reflects shipped reality and serves as the foundation for prioritization.
Determine Whether Vulnerabilities Are Reachable
For every vulnerability, evaluate whether the affected code paths are reachable in the context of the product.
Reachability analysis evaluates execution paths within shipped firmware and binaries by statically analyzing entry points, call graphs, and invocation context to determine whether vulnerable functions can realistically be reached at runtime.
Results are tied to specific builds and artifacts, not abstract source assumptions.
What you get: A dramatically reduced vulnerability set—often eliminating the majority of noise—without lowering the bar for rigor.
Apply Exploit and Policy Context Consistently
Enrich reachability results with additional signals, including:
- Known exploit activity
- Severity and impact indicators
- Internal security and release policies
Prioritization logic is applied consistently across products and releases, ensuring decisions don’t vary based on who is triaging or when.
What you get: A clear, defensible view of which vulnerabilities require immediate attention and which do not.
Record Defensible "Not Affected" Decisions
When vulnerabilities are determined to be unreachable or non-exploitable, record explicit, reviewable decisions instead of silently suppressing findings.
Capture rationale tied directly to reachability evidence, assign standardized VEX statuses, and maintain a complete audit trail of decisions.
What you get: Confidence that prioritization decisions can be reviewed internally, shared with customers, or defended during audits.
Re-Evaluate Automatically as Software Evolves
As new builds ship, dependencies change, or new CVEs emerge, automatically re-run reachability and prioritization logic.
When execution paths change, previously unreachable vulnerabilities are surfaced immediately without manual re-triage.
What you get: A living prioritization workflow that stays current across releases without restarting from scratch.
Key Focus Areas
Reachability Analysis
Move beyond component presence to determine whether vulnerable code is actually reachable in real execution paths. Reachability analysis evaluates how software is invoked within the product—considering entry points, call paths, and execution context—to distinguish theoretical issues from exploitable risk.
Impact: You eliminate large volumes of false positives while maintaining defensible, technically grounded prioritization.
Exploit Context
Prioritize vulnerabilities using real-world threat signals, not just abstract severity scores. Reachability findings are enriched with exploit intelligence, severity indicators, and internal policy thresholds to reflect both technical exposure and likelihood of exploitation, without reverting to CVSS-only triage.
Impact: Teams focus remediation on vulnerabilities that combine real exposurewith real-world risk without drowning in noise.
Defensible "Not Affected" Decisions
Make and maintain explicit decisions for vulnerabilities that do not impact your product. Explicit "not affected" decisions are recorded with traceable reachability evidence, standardized VEX status, and a complete audit history.
Impact: "Not affected" is no longer an assumption; it's a defensible, repeatable decision you can stand behind.
Consistent Re-Runs Across Builds
Reachability and prioritization logic automatically re-run as builds, dependencies, or CVEs change—surfacing newly reachable risk without manual re-triage.
Impact: Prioritization stays current across releases without restarting from scratch.
What This Enables
Teams using reachability-driven prioritization consistently achieve:
Significant reduction in vulnerability noise
Faster time to determine impact when new CVEs appear
More focused remediation and less engineering churn
Consistent, explainable decisions across products and releases
Stronger confidence when communicating with customers, auditors, and regulators
Most importantly, vulnerability management shifts from reactive triage to a repeatable, defensible process.
Coverage Advantage: Finite State vs. Traditional Tools
Most tools only see part of the picture, leaving blind spots that compound across releases. Finite State connects source, binaries, and evidence into a single system.
| FeatureFeature |  | Typical AppSec (source-only)Typical | Firmware-Only ScannersFirmware-Only |
|---|---|---|---|
Unified source and binary analysisUnified source and binary analysis | |||
Binary and firmware decompositionBinary and firmware decomposition | |||
SBOM generation and merge (source + binaries)SBOM generation and merge (source + binaries) | |||
Deduplication and correlation across buildsDeduplication and correlation across builds | |||
Reachability-based vulnerability analysisReachability-based vulnerability analysis | |||
Multi-source exploit intelligence enrichmentMulti-source exploit intelligence enrichment | |||
Policy checks and CI/CD gatesPolicy checks and CI/CD gates | |||
Audit-ready evidence packs (CRA, FDA, and others)Audit-ready evidence packs (CRA, FDA, and others) | |||
Post-market monitoring with living SBOMsPost-market monitoring with living SBOMs | |||
Developer workflows with PR-ready diffsDeveloper workflows with PR-ready diffs |
What Our Customers Say
See how Finite State's reachability-driven vulnerability prioritization is helping organizations strenghten their security posture and respond to threats faster.
See Reachability-Driven Prioritization in Action
Focus remediation where it matters. Prove your decisions. Stay ready as software evolves.