# Check whether a newly announced vulnerability affects us

Turns a new CVE or advisory into an exposure check, urgency call, and action plan for your environment.

- Topic: Research & Summaries
- Framework: Few-Shot
- Level: Standard
- Tags: Summarize, Fill-in Template
- Source: https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/prompts/check-whether-a-newly-announced-vulnerability-affects-us

## Prompt

```text
Help me work out whether a newly announced vulnerability affects us and how urgently to act.

**Advisory or CVE details:** [PASTE the vendor advisory, CVE description, affected versions, fixed versions, workarounds]
**Exploit status I've seen:** [e.g. "listed in CISA KEV", "public proof of concept", "no known exploitation" - with source]
**Our potentially affected assets:** [PASTE inventory: product, version, count, internet-facing or internal]
**Our environment notes:** [compensating controls, configurations that may matter]

Steps:
1. Summarize the vulnerability in plain words: what an attacker could do, what access they need, and what conditions must be true.
2. Compare affected versions and conditions to our inventory. For each asset: affected / not affected / unknown, with the reason.
3. Rate our urgency (emergency / this week / normal patch cycle) based on exploitation status, exposure, and asset criticality. Explain the rating.
4. Action plan: patch or upgrade path, interim mitigations or workarounds from the advisory, and how to confirm the fix applied.
5. Detection: what to look for in logs to check whether it was exploited before we patched.
6. Questions to answer where data is missing (e.g. "Is feature X enabled?").

Rules: use only the advisory text and data I provided. Do not invent version numbers, exploit details, or IOCs; mark gaps [VERIFY WITH VENDOR ADVISORY].

Return: a one-paragraph summary for my manager, the asset table (Asset | Version | Affected? | Exposure | Action | Owner), and the action checklist.
```

## What to fill in

- compensating controls, configurations that may matter
- VERIFY WITH VENDOR ADVISORY

Free to copy and use. From ThinkWithPrompt (https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/), a library of 2,663 curated AI prompts.