Known Risks.
Vulnerability Risk Management Guide for Healthcare Organizations
The Everyday Problem
Healthcare organization are under mounting pressure to manage cybersecurity vulnerabilities with increasingly complexity.
The Healthcare Cyber Risk Landscape
Healthcare organizations are dealing with a rapidly expanding ecosystem:
- Traditional IT environments
- Cloud environments, platforms, and services
- Cyber-physical systems
- Connected medical devices
Many technologies were not built for today’s threat landscape—creating risk to patient safety, operations, and compliance.
What Healthcare Leaders Think about Vulnerability Management?
To better understand how healthcare leaders are managing this reality, members of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) recently participated in a survey focused on vulnerability management across IT and medical/IoT environments. Their responses reveal both progress and persistent gaps—and point clearly to the need for a more unified approach. The data below reflects the survey results conducted by CHIME.
Respondents included CIOs, CISOs, clinical and digital leaders from ambulatory organizations, and large multi-hospital systems.
Chime Survey Insights
Overall View: Vulnerability management is an enterprise risk issue, not just an IT function.
Published: January, 2026
Contents:
What Healthcare Leaders Think about Vulnerability Management…
Vulnerability Management as a Program
Status Quo Can’t Keep Up with Vulnerabiilty Exploitation
Unified Vulnerability Management Program from Clearwater
Reference: Vulnerability Management Requirements Across Compliance Standards…
Ready to get serious about vulnerability exposure risk?
Top Vulnerability Management Challenges
Healthcare leaders report:
- Limited budget and staffing
- Outdated or unsupported systems
- High volumes of vulnerabilities
- Difficulty prioritizing risk
- Patch testing and deployment delays
The imbalance: vulnerabilities are discovered faster than they can be remediated.
Scanning Alone Isn’t Enough
Most organizations reported scanning weekly or quarterly, with some scanning continuously. While frequent scanning is important, the survey suggests that scanning alone does not equate to improved security outcomes. High-frequency scans can overwhelm teams if results are not actionable or aligned with clinical realities.
Reality: More scanning does not equal less risk if findings make more noise and are not clearly prioritized based on external and internal risk parameters.
The Biggest Gap: Unifying IT & Medical Device Vulnerability Programs
Only 36% of respondents reported fully integrated IT and medical/IoT vulnerability management programs. Nearly half said their programs were only partially integrated. One in five acknowledged little to no integration at all.
Key barriers:
- Medical device patching limitations
- No unified asset inventory
- IT and clinical engineering silos
- Limited remediation resources
Confidence Is Cautious
When it comes to identifying and addressing high-risk vulnerabilities confidence is moderate – but fragile.
- 84% are somewhat confident
- Only 8% are very confident
Healthcare leaders believe their programs work under normal conditions—but are stressed by zero-days, ransomware, and urgent vendor disclosures.
What Will Close the Gap
Healthcare leaders say prioritizing these actions will improve outcomes:
- Look to create a single, unified asset inventory
- Unify vulnerability management with tools spanning IT and medical devices
- Create a formal cross-department governance to educate on risk and risk remediation actions
- This problem is not declining so find a way to optimize and increase remediation resource effectiveness
- Collectively work for greater vendor accountability
Navigating a Path Forward
Healthcare organizations are under mounting pressure to manage cybersecurity vulnerabilities across an increasingly complex technology ecosystem. Traditional IT environments now coexist with cloud platforms, cyber-physical systems, and thousands of network-connected medical devices—many of which were never designed with modern cybersecurity threats in mind.
The CHIME findings highlight a dangerous imbalance. Healthcare organizations are discovering vulnerabilities faster than they can reasonably assess or remediate them—especially when clinical constraints limit patching or downtime. Traditional scan-and-patch models struggle in environments where patient care cannot be interrupted.
The CHIME survey makes one thing clear: healthcare organizations understand the risk—but need help operationalizing solutions at scale. Vulnerability management must evolve from a reactive, resource-draining process into a proactive, continuously improving risk management program.
Vulnerability Management as a Program, not a Project
To reduce risk at scale, vulnerability management needs to evolve because business constraints and complexity is not decreasing.
Advancing risk-driven vulnerability management and remediation starts with an approach that supports faster response, better prioritization, and stronger alignment with patient care. This is not about a new initiative or a project, but an ongoing program that is consistent and continually taking advantage of the latest threat intelligence, both externally and internally derived, based on operational and patient care risks.
Healthcare environments are complex and diverse, meaning vulnerability scanning, prioritization, and remediation likely occupy a significant portion of weekly IT effort.
According to reports by the Department of Health and Human Services in partnership with the Health Sector Coordinating Council, Hospital Resiliency Landscape Analysis:
- “The use of antiquated hardware, systems, and software by hospitals is concerning — 96% of small, medium, and large sized hospitals claim they were operating with end-of-life operating systems or software with known vulnerabilities, which is inclusive of medical devices.”
- Despite regular scanning, only 53% of surveyed hospitals stated they have a documented plan for addressing the vulnerabilities identified — indicating that scanning alone isn’t sufficient without a corresponding remediation process.
Without exception, vulnerability management continues to grow in complexity across those that provide healthcare to patients and those supporting care delivery and management through specialized technology and business services. With one of the most complex, interconnected technology landscapes and service constraints that require a cautious approach to vulnerability remediation so as to not disrupt patient care or vital services. Vulnerability management in healthcare is an increasingly challenging task. Healthcare environments create a vast attack surface that requires constant risk management.
Clearwater’s Vulnerability Management Trend Report
View the ups and downs of how healthcare organizations deal with vulnerabilities month by month. Critical vulnerability finding trends show how these contribute to the running risk exposure in healthcare.
This is the only industry specific report for healthcare broken down by market segments. See how your organization compares and the improvement achieved across these segments:
- Healthcare Systems & Surgical Hospitals
- Physician & Medical Specialty Groups
- Healthcare Software and Businesses Associates
Status Quo Can’t Keep Up with Vulnerability Exploitation
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Growth
Published CVEs rose by roughly 20% from 2024 to 2025, expanding the attack surface and increasing the workload for vulnerability management teams.
This increase reflects broader disclosure participation, expanded CNA coverage, and backlog reductions in scoring pipelines. Counts may vary due to withdrawn CVEs and NVD timing differences.
CVE Numbering Authority (CNA) Growth
CVE Numbering Authorities (CNAs) are approved organizations that assign CVE IDs within defined technology scopes. In 2025, the global CNA community grew by approximately 6%, expanding vulnerability coverage and accelerating disclosure across vendors and platforms.
Known Exploited Vulnerability (KEV) Growth
Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEVs) are software and hardware flaws that the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has confirmed are actively being used in real-world attacks. Between 2024 and 2025, the KEV catalog expanded by approximately 20%, underscoring the growing pace of proven exploitation.
Ready to get serious about vulnerability exposure risk?
Clearwater’s Unified Vulnerability Management (UVM) solution is built for the realities of modern healthcare
- IT systems, cloud environments, and connected medical technologies are unified within a single, coordinated vulnerability risk management program.
- Combines continuous IT, cloud, and medical device scanning with 24/7 threat‑intelligence correlation to ensure teams focus on the vulnerabilities that matter most—when they matter most.
- Shifts organizations from raw vulnerability counts to contextualized risk intelligence—prioritizing issues by exploitability, operational impact, and patient safety rather than severity scores alone.
Clearwater’s Unified Vulnerability Management Program
- Directly addresses fragmentation by providing a single, unified inventory and shared operational view across IT, MedTech, and cyber-physical systems
- Enables cross-functional teams to work from the same risk picture
- Clinically informed risk prioritization, we understand healthcare and patient care risk
- 24/7 monitoring and expert guidance, proactively reviewing vulnerability exposure based on emerging threat alerts
- Faster response times and reduced exploit windows with experts assisting with prioritization, rememdiation recomendation or compensating risk mitigating actions
Move beyond fragmented controls toward a more resilient, defensible, and patient-centered security posture with Clearwater Managed Security Services.
Reference
Vulnerability Management Requirements Accross Compliance Standards
Every compliance and regulatory guide for healthcare organizations has a vulnerability management requirement, yet vulnerability risk continues to grow. Here is a recap of the security and compliance frameworks and how they provide guidance for vulnerability management.
Common Requirements Across All
- Vulnerability identification
- Risk-based prioritization
- Timely remediation or mitigation
- Ongoing monitoring
- Documented governance
HIPAA (Security Rule)
Requirement
Identify, assess, and reduce risks to ePHI.
References
- 45 CFR §164.308(a)(1)(ii)(A) – Risk Analysis
- 45 CFR §164.308(a)(1)(ii)(B) – Risk Management
- 45 CFR §164.308(a)(5)(ii)(B) – Malicious Software
- 45 CFR §164.308(a)(8) – Evaluation
HITECH Act
Requirement
Prevent and reduce breach exposure through reasonable safeguards.
References
- §13402 – Breach Notification
- §13404 – Business Associate Liability
- §13411–13412 – Enforcement & Penalties
CMMC
Requirement
Scan, track, and remediate system vulnerabilities.
References
- RA.1.001 – Identify Vulnerabilities
- RA.2.143 – Scan & Remediate
- RA.3.144 – Risk Analysis
- SI.2.145 – Flaw Remediation
HHS 405(d) (HICP)
Requirement
Healthcare-specific vulnerability management best practices.
References
- Practice #2 – Vulnerability Management
HITRUST CSF
Requirement
Formal, documented vulnerability management program.
References
- 10.1 – Technical Vulnerability Management
- 09.2 – Risk Management
- 01.a – Asset Inventory
SOC 2 (Trust Services Criteria)
Requirement
Identify, monitor, and remediate security vulnerabilities.
References
- CC3.2 – Risk Identification
- CC4.1 – Monitoring
- CC7.1 – Vulnerability Detection
- CC7.2 – Security Monitoring
PCI DSS 4.0
Requirements
- Emphasizes continuous risk assessment and targeted risk analysis rather than only periodic checks.
- Introduces greater flexibility in how requirements are met, but raises evidence and testing expectations.
- Makes explicit the need to define remediation timelines based on risk and to document compensating controls when chosen.
References
- Requirement 6.1 – Identify security vulnerabilities and assign a risk ranking.
- Requirement 6.2 – Ensure systems are protected from known vulnerabilities by installing applicable vendor-supplied security patches in a timely manner.
- Requirement 6.3.1 (PCI DSS 4.0) – Perform targeted risk analysis to determine remediation timelines.
- Requirement 6.4 – Follow change-control processes for system and application changes (includes testing and validation).
- Requirement 11.2.1 – Quarterly internal vulnerability scans.
- Requirement 11.2.2 – Quarterly external vulnerability scans by an Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV).
- Requirement 11.2.3 – Re-scan after remediation to validate fixes.
- Requirement 11.5 – File integrity monitoring (to detect unauthorized changes/exploitation).
- Requirement 12.3.1 – Defined roles and responsibilities for security (supports accountable remediation processes).