Compliance & Regulation

When does a vulnerability require patching?

Not every vulnerability in your SBOM requires a patch. The FDA's 2016 postmarket guidance is clear that the question is whether a vulnerability is actually exploitable and whether it presents uncontrolled risk to safety, not whether it exists in a component somewhere.

New CVE in SBOMmatched to a componentReachable?mapped on the twinExploitable?verified on devicePatch or evidencefix, or defensible no-fix
Most findings exit at 'not reachable' or 'not exploitable', with the reasoning captured.

The mistake manufacturers make is treating a CVSS base score as a patch trigger. A network-scored 9.8 can be a local 2.4 on your device once TLS blocks the path or the component sits behind a trust boundary the attacker never reaches. Patching all of them is expensive, destabilizing, and, ironically, harder to defend than a well-evidenced no-fix.

The defensible answer is not "we patched everything." It is "here is why this one did not need it."

What the FDA wants is a controlled, documented decision. If a vulnerability is not exploitable in your product, say so, show the reasoning, and monitor it. That is compliance without unnecessary patching.

← All intelligence
Get started

See your device through ELTON.

Start with one device. We build the twin from documentation your quality system already produces, run AI discovery remotely, and show you the graph: the handful to fix, and the evidence for everything else.

Automate medical device vulnerability discovery and verification. FDA §524B methodologyExploitability proven on-device95% faster than legacy testing Book a Demo
Platform
Platform OverviewDigital TwinAutonomous TestingExploitability VerificationVulnerability GraphRemediation OptimizationELTON TestLink™Lifecycle & MetricsCVSSv4 Migration
Solutions
FDA §524BEU MDR/CRAEU REDNIS2IMDRF N60 / N73Postmarket SurveillanceIncident Response
Why ELTON
Why ELTONPricing
Resources
Intelligence & BlogRegulatory GuidesWebinarsWhitepapers
Company
AboutLeadershipCareersContact Book a Demo