Optimizing the Selection of Vulnerability Remediation Actions in Operational Technology Environments

Operational technology environments frequently face with an accumulation of software vulnerabilities and limited resources for remediation. In such contexts, organizations must prioritize which actions to take, often under significant constraints. This paper models the remediation planning process as an optimization problem, specifically as variants of the knapsack problem, allowing for multiple remediation options per vulnerability. We evaluate this formulation by comparing common industry heuristics against our proposed optimization-based solutions. Experimental results show that the optimization approach outperforms heuristic methods, achieving a minimum improvement of 40.9 % over the next-best alternative in terms of total security benefit. These results indicate that treating remediation planning as an optimization problem enables more effective vulnerability management and improved allocation of scarce operational resources.