Exposure Management Gap Report - Check Point Exposure Management

Under Pressure: The 2026 Exposure Gap Report

Vulnerabilities more than doubled as a share of critical exposures in 2026. Attackers are moving faster. Most security teams aren’t. This report shows why not all exposures are as critical as they first seem and how mature teams are moving from visibility to mitigation in under an hour.

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Customers

Exposures

42.6% of critical exposures were vulnerabilities in 2026, up from 18.7% in 2025 / 76% of all critical risk concentrated in just two categories / How exposure profiles differ by industry and region

Prioritization

Only 7.8% of vulnerability alerts are genuinely critical or high risk / How agentic validation cuts through alert noise / What KEV and novel findings mean for remediation focus

Remediation

30% of Utilities organizations close critical exposures in under one hour / MTTR benchmarks across Healthcare, Financial Services, Government, and Utilities / What separates mature programs from those just starting out

The AEV data was the most useful thing in here. Knowing that 92% of our vulnerability alerts don’t need immediate action changes how we resource the team.

Head of Security Operations Healthcare network

I’ve read a lot of threat reports. This one actually tells you where you stand relative to your industry, not just what’s happening in the wild.

VP of Information Security, utilities company

“We’ve been measuring remediation in weeks. This report made it clear that’s not a timeline that works anymore.”

CISO Global financial services firm

The remediation benchmarks are what I needed. Now I have something concrete to bring to the board when I talk about where we are versus where we should be.

Director of Cyber Risk Government agency

Get the full report

Critical exposure is concentrated, measurable, and closeable. See where organizations in your industry stand and what strong programs look like in practice.

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