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Finding Exposure Quantification

Understand how Hyver quantifies exposure reduction to guide remediation priorities.

Updated over 5 months ago

Overview

This article explains how Hyver calculates exposure reduction for each finding — helping you prioritize remediation based on how much a fix can reduce your organization’s cyber risk.
Hyver provides dollar-based exposure reduction values, giving security teams a clear understanding of mitigation impact and return on investment.


What is exposure reduction?

Exposure reduction quantifies the estimated decrease in risk (measured in dollar value) if a specific finding is fixed.
This value helps determine:

  • Which findings should be prioritized

  • How much a fix could lower your organization's overall exposure

Every finding of type Vulnerability can be assigned an exposure reduction value.


Exposure v1 vs. Exposure v2

Feature

Exposure v1

Exposure v2

Which findings are measured

Only findings on successful attack routes

All findings, whether on a route or not

Required setup

None

Requires Likelihood v2 + Cost of Breach v2

Accuracy

Route-dependent

More complete and accurate

Hyver recommends enabling Exposure v2 for full visibility and risk-based prioritization.


How exposure reduction is calculated

  • Hyver simulates each finding individually in its “fixed” state to estimate how much it would reduce exposure.

  • The value is shown as a single dollar figure, not a range:

  • The calculation includes factors like:

    • Position in the attack graph

    • Business asset exposure

    • Cost of Breach

    • Likelihood of exploitation

If Cost of Breach (CoB) is missing, users with permission will see a link to update it.
If CoB exists but there’s no graph or data, the exposure value is set to None:


Conditions that trigger recalculation

Exposure reduction values are recalculated when changes occur in:

  • The graph (add/update/delete nodes or edges)

  • New or updated findings

  • Remediation assets added/removed from attack routes

  • Likelihood version switch

  • Cost of Breach updates

  • Finding status changes (e.g., Fixed → Reopened)

  • Business asset settings or risk model updates

Any changes are tracked in the History tab for auditing:


Special cases

  • A finding marked Fixed retains its exposure reduction value at time of fixing.

  • If it’s reopened, a new value is recalculated.

  • Findings marked Not Relevant are assigned a value of None.

  • If a finding has no exposure impact, it will still not show $0 — it will be set to None, indicating it can’t be quantified, not that it has no risk.


Where to find exposure reduction data

  • On the Findings page, use filters to view findings by exposure reduction range:

  • In the right-hand pane, the dollar-based exposure reduction is displayed for each finding.

  • In mitigation plans, the total exposure reduction reflects the combined value of included findings.

The higher the value, the greater the expected impact of remediation.


Switching exposure model settings

Admins can switch between Likelihood v1/v2 and Cost of Breach v1/v2:

  • Go to Settings > Likelihood to change the version

  • Go to Settings > Cost of Breach to switch versions

  • All changes will be reflected across Hyver dashboards and calculations


Wrap-up / Next Steps

Exposure reduction helps you prioritize security fixes that make the biggest impact. With Exposure v2, every finding contributes to the bigger picture — giving you data-backed insights for smarter planning.

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