Glossary
CVE
Stands forCommon Vulnerabilities and Exposures
A public unique identifier for one security vulnerability, in the form CVE-YYYY-NNNN. The shared language that lets tools talk about the same flaw.
Also calledvulnerability identifier
A public identifier for a security vulnerability, in the form CVE-2026-1234. Issued by an authorised body, it lets a scanner, a vendor, a security team and a public database refer to exactly the same flaw.
The operational point: an identifier is not a unit of work. One patch often closes dozens of them, and the same identifier appears across dozens of hosts. A list organised by vulnerability looks several times longer than the work it actually represents.
The unit you can schedule is the patch.