After mitigating risks, ensuring compliance and building a robust security program for a Fortune 500 company, we learned that looking busy isn’t the same as being safe.
Trap is easy for busy cybersecurity leaders to fall into. We rely on metrics that tell the story of the incredible effort we are consuming, the number of patched vulnerabilities, and the speed of response, but vulnerability management metrics are associated with operational metrics as traditional approaches to measuring and implementing vulnerability management cannot actually reduce risk. Therefore, we rely on various methods of reporting the number of patches applied using the traditional 30/60/90 day patching method.
I call these vanity metrics. The numbers look impressive in the report, but lack actual impact. They provide peace of mind, but not insight. Meanwhile, threats continue to be more refined, with attackers taking advantage of blind spots we haven’t measured. I have seen firsthand that this cutting between measurement and meaning can expose tissue.
This article explains why vanity metrics are not sufficient to protect today’s complex environment, and why it’s time to stop measuring activity and start measuring effectiveness.
Drill Down: What is a vanity metric?
Vanity metrics are numbers that look good in reports but offer little strategic value. It is easy to track, easy to view, and is often used to demonstrate activity, but it usually does not reflect actual risk reduction. It usually falls into three main types:
Volume Metrics – These counts: patches applied, vulnerabilities discovered, scans completed. They create a sense of productivity, but they don’t talk about the impact or risk of relevance on the business. Time-based metrics with no risk context – Metrics such as average time (MTTD) or average time of improvement (MTTR) can sound impressive. However, without prioritization based on criticality, velocity is merely a “method” rather than a “method.” Coverage Metrics – Percentages such as “95% of scanned assets” and “90% of patched vulnerabilities” give an illusion of control. But they ignore the issues 5% have been overlooked and whether they are the most important.
Vanity metrics are inherently incorrect, but are dangerously incomplete. They track movements rather than meaning. And if they are not bound by threat relevance or business assets, they can quietly undermine your entire security strategy.
Vanity Metric: More Harm than Good
If vanity metrics control security reports, they can do more harm than good. Organizations chasing good looking times and budgets in executive briefings have seen important exposures remain untouched.
What’s the problem when you rely on vanity metrics?
False effort – The team focuses on what can be easily corrected or what drives metrics. This creates a dangerous gap between what has been done and what needs to be done. False Trust – Upward charts can mislead leadership and trust an organization to be safe. Without context – exploitability, attack path – that belief can be fragile and costly. Broken Prioritization – Large, uncontext-free vulnerability lists cause fatigue. High-risk issues can easily be lost in noise and can be delayed when repair is most important. Strategic Stagnation – Reporting reward activity rather than impact slows innovation. The program will be reactive – always busy, but not always safe.
I’ve seen violations occur in an environment full of sparkling KPIs. reason? Those KPIs were not linked to reality. Metrics that do not reflect actual business risks are not pointless and dangerous.
Move to meaningful metrics
When Vanity Metrics tells you what’s done, meaningful metrics will tell you what’s important. They shift their focus from activity to impact – giving security teams and business leaders a common understanding of real risk.
Meaningful metrics start with a clear equation: risk = likelihood x impact. It’s not just asking, “What kind of vulnerabilities exist?” – “Which of these can be exploited to reach our most important assets and what will the outcome be?” To shift to meaningful metrics, consider pinning your report around five important metrics.
Risk Score (Related to Business Impact) – A meaningful risk score measures exploitation, the importance of assets, and potential impact. It should evolve dynamically as exposure changes, or as threat intelligence changes. This score helps leadership understand security in business terms – not the number of vulnerabilities, but how close it is to meaningful violations. Important Asset Exposure (tracking over time) – Not all assets are equal. You need to know which systems are currently publicly critical of your business and how their exposure is trending. Are you mitigating risks to your most important infrastructure, or are you spinning the cycle with a low impact correction? If you track this for a long time, you’ll see if your security program is actually closing the right gap. Attack Path Mapping – Vulnerabilities do not exist on their own. Attackers integrate exposure – misunderstandings, underprivileged identities and unearned CVEs – to reach a valuable target. Mapping these paths shows how the attacker actually moves the environment. It helps to prioritize ways of working together to shape threats, not just individual issues. Breakdown of exposure classes – You need to understand which types of exposure are the most common and most dangerous. This breakdown informs both tactical responses and strategic planning, including misuse of credentials, missing patches, open ports, or false cloud suppression. For example, if 60% of the risk is attributable to identity-based exposure, it should shape your investment decision. Average Time to Repair for Serious Exposure (MTTR) – The average MTTR is a defective metric. Dragged by simple fixes and ignore harsh issues. What matters is how quickly you close the exposure that actually puts you at risk. MTTR for critical exposures – those tied to exploitable attack paths or crown jewel assets – are what actually defines operational validity.
Collectively, continuous updated meaningful metrics provide more than a snapshot – they provide a living contextual view of your threat exposure. They enhance security reporting from task tracking to strategic insights. And most importantly, they give both security teams and business leaders a common language to make risk-based decisions.
Conclusion
Vanity metrics provide comfort. They fill the dashboard and are moved in the boardroom, suggesting progress. But in the real world, they hardly protect themselves in the real world where threat actors don’t care about the number of patches you applied last month.
Actual security requires a transition from tracking what can be easily measured to focusing on what is actually important. That means adopting metrics based on business risk. And this is where frameworks like Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) work. CTEM provides organizations with a structure that moves from static vulnerability lists to dynamic, prioritized actions. And the results are persuasive – by 2026, the Gartner project is that organizations implementing CTEM can reduce violations by two-thirds.
The metrics you choose will shape the conversations you have and the conversations you missed. Vanity metrics keep everyone comfortable. Meaningful indicators force more difficult questions, but they bring you closer to the truth. This is because if you don’t measure risk properly, you won’t be able to reduce it.
Note: This article is skillfully written by Jason Fruge, CISO of XM Cyber.
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