What the organization has been working on is the Common Vulnerability Reporting Framework (CVRF), a free-to-use, XML-based reporting standard that promises to clean up the many different ways companies document, refer to and report on discovered software vulnerabilities across a multitude of product types.

The industry has already come up with the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) system for uniquely identifying security flaws without each vendor using a different nomenclature, and the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), a system for rating their severity. The CVRF is the last major plank of this industry overhaul.

The idea is that instead of each vendor using its own report design, in the future they will adopt the CVRF, removing the time-consuming and potentially insecure chore of having to translate between incompatible reports, one into the other, many times over.

The standard is aimed not only at tech companies and software vendors, but also at anyone with an interest in security, including researchers, computer-emergency response teams (CERTs), large companies and governments. The benefit to consumers will be indirect.

"With the use of CVRF, the producers of vulnerability reports will benefit from faster and more standardized reporting," said Linda Betz, president of ICASI and director of IT Policy and Information Security at IBM.