Europe’s GCVE Raises Concerns Over Fragmentation in Vulnerability Databases

The GCVE program emerged in response to broader concerns about resilience, sustainability, and potential single points of failure in the existing CVE program, explains Haiman Wong, fellow, cybersecurity and emerging threats at R Street Institute. 

“It was designed to involve multiple governments and stakeholders, provide an open API for integration with existing security tools, and map back to the existing CVE framework rather than replace it outright,” she tells Dark Reading.

The GCVE could be beneficial for companies if it meaningfully improves continuity and access to vulnerability intelligence, Wong says. Cybersecurity tends to benefit more from harmonized, coordinated sources of truth, so defenders can focus on remediation rather than reconciling inconsistencies across multiple databases, she explains.

“Additional cross-validation in vulnerability reporting could, in theory, also provide a sense of resilience and corroboration if a single system falters or loses support, but that value diminishes quickly if multiple CVE initiatives begin to diverge in how vulnerabilities are identified, labeled, or prioritized,” Wong says…

The primary risk posed by GCVE is not its mere existence but the potential fragmentation of vulnerability coordination if different CVE initiatives operate as distinct or competing authorities, Wong says. She anticipates that it’s unlikely the EU will encounter entirely unique classes of vulnerabilities that could introduce duplicative or inconsistent listings, only adding to the confusion for defenders. Duplicative CVEs could also increase operational burden and undermine confidence in vulnerability data, she adds.

“While the EU’s impulse to increase resilience is understandable, the ultimate efficacy of GCVE will hinge on whether it lives up to its stated intent — reinforcing global coordination and access — or inadvertently undermines them during its proving phase,” Wong says.