In this On Location episode during OWASP AppSec Global 2025 in Barcelona, Aram Hovsepyan, an active contributor to the OWASP SAMM project, brings a critical perspective to how the industry approaches security metrics, especially in vulnerability management. His message is clear: the way we collect and use metrics needs a serious rethink if we want to make real progress in reducing risk.

Too often, organizations rely on readily available tool-generated metrics—like vulnerability counts—without pausing to ask what those numbers actually mean in context. These metrics may look impressive in a dashboard or board report, but as Aram points out, they’re often disconnected from business goals. Worse, they can drive the wrong behaviors, such as trying to reduce raw vulnerability counts without considering exploitability or actual impact.

Aram emphasizes the importance of starting with organizational goals, formulating questions that reflect progress toward those goals, and only then identifying metrics that provide meaningful answers. It’s a research-backed approach that has been known for decades but is often ignored in favor of convenience.

False positives, inflated dashboards, and a lack of alignment between metrics and strategy are recurring issues. Aram notes that many tools err on the side of overreporting to avoid false negatives, which leads to overwhelming—and often irrelevant—volumes of data. In some cases, up to 80% of identified vulnerabilities may be false positives, leaving security teams drowning in noise and chasing issues that may not matter.

What’s missing, he argues, is a strategic lens. Vulnerability management should be one component of a broader application security program, not the centerpiece. The OWASP Software Assurance Maturity Model (SAMM) offers a framework for evaluating and improving across a range of practices—strategy, risk analysis, and threat modeling among them—that collectively support better decision-making.

To move forward, organizations need to stop treating vulnerability data as a performance metric and start treating it as a signal in a larger conversation about risk, impact, and architectural choices. Aram’s call to action is simple: ask better questions, use tools more purposefully, and build security strategies that actually serve the business.

GUEST: Aram Hovsepyan | OWASP SAMM Project Core Team member and CEO/Founder at CODIFIC | https://www.linkedin.com/in/aramhovsep/

HOST: Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine and Host of Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast | https://www.seanmartin.com

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