Vulnerability Management Patents: Leaders & Filing Trends 2026
- 27.5% concentration at the top. The five leading assignees hold 405 of 1,474 records in scope, but the next 95 ranked filers still add up to a long tail rather than a second tier.
- Filing kept climbing through 2024. Volume rose from 125 records in 2021 to 167 in 2024, a +34% increase, before the expected 18-month publication lag makes 2025-2026 look artificially quiet.
- Two IPC subclasses dominate the claim space. G06F and H04L each cover roughly two-thirds of all records, meaning most inventive activity sits in general computing and digital transmission rather than in specialised hardware.
Filing growth compares 2021 (125 records) with 2024 (167) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 1,474 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent filings at the intersection of vulnerability assessment and reachability analysis — scanning, call graph reachability, dependency vulnerability detection — and the operational controls built around them, including patch management, severity scoring, runtime monitoring and exploit prediction. The search string requires both a detection-side term and a remediation or scoring-side term to appear together, so the corpus is weighted toward inventions that connect finding a vulnerability to deciding what to do about it, rather than scanning techniques alone.
The 1,474 records in scope span receiving offices led by the United States, with meaningful volume also filed through WIPO's PCT route, the EPO, and national offices in India and Germany. That spread points to a field where applicants are pursuing multi-jurisdiction protection rather than filing defensively in a single home market.
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Filing trends and technology composition
Filing volume and IPC composition for the 1,474 records in scope, drawn directly from the underlying dataset.
A decade of rising, then plateauing, filing activity
Annual filings rose from 62 records in 2017 to a peak of 167 in 2024, including the confirmed +34% increase from 2021 to 2024. Records published in 2025 and 2026 (39 so far) understate real filing activity because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months — treat the recent-year dip as a data artifact, not a real slowdown.
Concentration in two general-purpose subclasses
G06F (electric digital data processing) and H04L (digital information transmission) each appear in roughly two-thirds of records, since a record can carry several IPC codes at once. G06N (AI-based computing) trails at 13.3%, suggesting machine-learning-driven approaches such as exploit prediction are still a minority claim strategy rather than the default one.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,474 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Vulnerability Management and Reachability with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about vulnerability management and reachability and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
Predicting false positives from vulnerability scanners using data analytics and machine learning
A method and system for remediating a vulnerability in a first computing resource asset in a computer network, including receiving vulnerability scanning results data from each respective one of a plurality of diverse vulnerability scanners, storing the vulnerability scanning results data as a collection of vulnerability scanning results data, normalizing and extracting common features from the normalized data, vectorizing the common features to determine feature vectors, applying a false positive predictor model to predict a false positive, and separating vulnerability scanning results data that corresponds to one or more predicted false positives from a remainder of the collection.Filed by Saudi Arabian Oil Company, published 2021-06-03 as US20210168165A1.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20070192863A1 | Systems and methods for processing data flows | 960 |
| 2 | US20120240185A1 | Systems and methods for processing data flows | 862 |
| 3 | US20070121596A1 | System and method for providing network level and nodal level vulnerability protection in VoIP networks | 765 |
| 4 | US20140137257A1 | System, Method and Apparatus for Assessing a Risk of One or More Assets Within an Operational Technology Infr… | 759 |
| 5 | US20060080656A1 | Methods and instructions for patch management | 640 |
| 6 | US20080229415A1 | Systems and methods for processing data flows | 637 |
| 7 | US20110238855A1 | Processing data flows with a data flow processor | 618 |
| 8 | US20060191010A1 | System for intrusion detection and vulnerability assessment in a computer network using simulation and machin… | 465 |
| 9 | US20080047016A1 | CCLIF: A quantified methodology system to assess risk of IT architectures and cyber operations | 462 |
| 10 | US20080262990A1 | Systems and methods for processing data flows | 441 |
Citation counts accumulate over time, so older filings such as the two data-flow processing patents from the mid-2000s naturally lead this table; treat citation rank as a measure of historical influence rather than current relevance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for filing strategy
Reading the concentration, trend and composition figures together points to where claim space is crowded and where it is still open.
A leader with a long tail, not a duopoly
The leading assignee holds 128 records against a fifth-place figure of 41, a steep drop that signals one dominant filer rather than a tight cluster of equally matched competitors. Beyond the top ten (36.6% combined), the remaining 90 ranked assignees hold comparatively small counts each, consistent with a field many organisations touch but few claim heavily.
Sustained growth through the last complete filing year
Filing volume climbed from 125 to 167 records across 2021-2024, the last span the data can treat as complete. Several of the currently leading assignees show sharp year-over-year declines in the most recent partial year, but that pattern is expected given publication lag and should not be read as retreat from the space.
General computing claims dominate over specialised hardware
With G06F and H04L each covering roughly two-thirds of records and G06N at just 13.3%, most protected inventions describe general-purpose scanning, scoring and transmission logic rather than dedicated AI models or signalling hardware. G08B and G02B each sit under 1.5%, indicating minimal overlap with physical alarm or optical systems.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to vulnerability management and reachability, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranking spans 100 companies, from a clear leader down to single-digit filers, with corporate IT vendors, network security specialists and at least one large financial institution all present.
One assignee well ahead of the field
The top-ranked filer holds more than three times the count of the fifth-placed assignee, a gap wide enough that its claim portfolio likely anchors freedom-to-operate analysis for anyone entering false-positive reduction or automated remediation workflows.
Established software and network vendors hold the core
Large enterprise software and network infrastructure vendors account for the bulk of the top ten, reflecting years of filing around endpoint, network and configuration-management vulnerability tooling.
A financial institution among the technology filers
The presence of a large bank inside the ranked leaders signals that vulnerability management patenting is not confined to security vendors; enterprises with large attack surfaces are filing defensively around their own risk-scoring and patch-prioritisation workflows.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| AS0001 INC | 1 | -96% |
| QOMPLX Inc | 0 | -100% |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | 0 | — |
| FORESCOUT TECHNOLOGIES INC | 0 | -100% |
| Bank of America Corp | 0 | -100% |
| Accenture Global Solutions Limited | 0 | — |
| McAfee LLC | 0 | — |
| Tripwire Inc | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, white space identification, or tracking a specific competitor.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leader
With one assignee holding 128 records against a fifth-place count of 41, any product touching false-positive prediction or automated remediation should be checked against that portfolio specifically, not just the field average.
Run a freedom-to-operate scanDraft around under-claimed reachability branches
Call graph reachability for third-party dependencies and cross-scanner false-positive correlation both show thin coverage relative to core scanning claims, making them candidates for a first-filed claim.
Explore white space in EurekaTrack momentum, not just historical share
Several currently leading assignees show sharp recent-year declines that are partly a publication-lag artifact; a rolling watch on new filings is more reliable than a single snapshot of the ranking.
Set up assignee monitoringCommon questions about this landscape
One assignee leads the ranked field with 128 records, well ahead of the fifth-placed filer at 41. The top five combined hold 405 of the 1,474 records in scope, or 27.5%, while the top ten hold 36.6%. Beyond that, coverage spreads across a long tail of 90 more ranked companies, each holding comparatively small counts, so the field is led by one company rather than dominated by a tight top tier.
Yes, through the last year the data can treat as complete. Filings rose from 125 records in 2021 to 167 in 2024, a confirmed +34% increase. The apparent drop in 2025 and 2026 is expected: patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so those years will keep filling in as more applications publish and should not be read as a real slowdown yet.
G06F (electric digital data processing) and H04L (digital information transmission) are by far the most common, each appearing in roughly two-thirds of the 1,474 records, since most inventions in this space combine general-purpose computing logic with network communication. G06N, covering AI-based computing, appears in only 13.3% of records, showing that machine-learning-driven approaches like exploit prediction are still a minority filing strategy compared to conventional scanning and scoring logic.
US20210168165A1, filed by Saudi Arabian Oil Company and published 2021-06-03, covers a method for reducing false positives from vulnerability scanners by combining results from multiple diverse scanners, normalizing and vectorizing common features, and applying a trained false-positive predictor model to separate likely false positives from the remaining results before remediation. It is a representative example of the detection-plus-remediation pattern this whole landscape is built around, rather than a scanning technique claimed in isolation. Anyone building multi-scanner correlation or ML-based false-positive filtering should review its claim scope directly.
The composition data shows heavy concentration in G06F and H04L general computing and transmission claims, with thinner coverage in areas like call graph reachability for third-party dependencies, cross-scanner false-positive correlation, and severity scoring tailored to operational technology or ICS assets. These branches see real filing activity but far less density than core scanning and patch management claims, making them more open for a narrowly drafted first claim. Any white-space conclusion should be checked against the specific assignee portfolios active in that sub-area, not just the aggregate class counts.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.