CWE is the underlying disease, CVE is a specific case of a patient catching it, and CVSS is the severity of their symptoms.
CWE (The Weakness / The Disease): The architectural root cause. It describes a type of coding flaw in theory. Example: SQL Injection
CVE (The Vulnerability / The Case): A real-world instance of that flaw discovered in a specific version of a software product.
CVSS (The Score / The Severity): A standardized rating system from 0.0 to 10.0 that calculates how dangerous and easily exploitable that specific vulnerability is.
How They Work Together to Enhance Security Strategy
Identify with CVE: Security scanners scan your network and flag known bugs by their CVE ID. This tells IT admins exactly which server or software is vulnerable.
Triage with CVSS: You might have 500 open CVEs. You look at the CVSS score (0.0−10.0) to instantly prioritize and patch the critical ones first.
Prevent with CWE: While admins patch the immediate bug, the AppSec team looks at the underlying CWE code. If the same coding flaw keeps causing CVEs, they update secure coding standards or static analysis (SAST) rules to block that mistake from ever being written again.
