BLOG | Oct 21, 2025

CWE vs CVE vs KEV: Untangling the Security Alphabet Soup

Understanding the differences between CWE, CVE, and KEV is critical for modern security and network teams. These acronyms represent the building blocks of threat identification and response, yet many professionals don’t fully grasp how they differ or interact. This blog breaks them down, shows their relationships, and explains how Forward Networks helps correlate them across your environment.

Request a Demo Read the Blog

Elyor Khakimov
Principal TME, Product Management

Who should read this post?

Security professionals managing vulnerability remediation
Network and compliance teams navigating CISA guidance
CISOs seeking better reporting clarity

What is covered in this content?

The difference between CWE, CVE, and KEV classifications
Examples of how each category is used in real-world scenarios
Why this classification system matters for enterprise risk
How Forward Networks connects these elements in one platform

Understanding the differences between CWE, CVE, and KEV is critical for modern security and network teams. These acronyms represent the building blocks of threat identification and response, yet many professionals don’t fully grasp how they differ or interact. This blog breaks them down, shows their relationships, and explains how Forward Networks helps correlate them across your environment.

What is a CWE?

A CWE (Common Weakness Enumeration) represents a type or category of design flaw. Think of it as a conceptual mistake that could be introduced in any system, such as improper privilege handling or weak input validation. Maintained by MITRE, CWEs serve as a universal taxonomy for software and hardware issues.

For example, CWE-269 refers to Improper Privilege Management, a weakness that can lead to attackers gaining elevated access. CWEs are not product-specific and don’t describe actual vulnerabilities. Instead, they define the underlying flaw that might lead to vulnerabilities in different environments.

CWEs are useful for identifying risk patterns and guiding secure design practices before issues emerge. They help standardize discussions about architectural weaknesses across security teams, vendors, and regulatory frameworks.

What is a CVE?

A CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) identifies a real-world security vulnerability in a specific product or software version. Where a CWE describes a category of risk, a CVE describes an instance of it.

Each CVE contains metadata such as:

Affected vendor and product
Version numbers
Description of the exploit
Severity rating via CVSS

CVEs can be linked back to CWEs to show what kind of weakness led to the problem. For example, CVE-2025-22254 affects FortiOS 7.4.3, where attackers with read-only rights could escalate to super-admin. It maps to CWE-269, the same privilege management weakness.

CVEs are essential for patch management, threat intelligence, and compliance tracking, as they provide concrete, actionable information about security gaps in specific environments.

What is a KEV?

A KEV (Known Exploited Vulnerability) is a CVE that has been actively exploited in the real world. Managed by CISA, the KEV catalog highlights those vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk due to confirmed attacks.

A vulnerability becomes part of the KEV catalog when:

Exploitation is observed in the wild
It presents elevated or imminent risk
Federal agencies are required to patch it

KEVs tend to attract ransomware operators, botnets, and nation-state attackers. For this reason, patching KEVs is often prioritized across both public and private sectors.

Organizations that align remediation workflows with KEV tracking significantly reduce exposure to known active threats.

Connecting the Dots with Forward Networks

Forward Networks unifies these classifications within your network environment. By providing a searchable, contextual view of your infrastructure, it becomes possible to correlate CWEs, CVEs, and KEVs with the devices and services that are actually affected.

The platform maps each device’s exposure and tracks which issues are theoretical (CWE), reported (CVE), or exploited (KEV). Instead of sorting through multiple tools, spreadsheets, and vendor advisories, you get an at-a-glance inventory that simplifies and accelerates security response.

This helps reduce MTTR, support compliance audits, and bring clarity to an otherwise fragmented vulnerability management process.

Winner of over 20 industry awards, Forward Enterprise is the best-in-class network modeling software that customers trust

Visit our press room Hear from Gartner

From Fortune 50 institutions to top level federal agencies, users agree that Forward Enterprise is unlike any other network modeling software

Evaluate the reviews Chat with an expert