AI-accelerated attacks are raising the stakes for cybersecurity. Strengthen identity, vulnerability remediation, and threat detection while using AI to respond faster.
Attackers and defenders have had a very interesting relationship over the years. For the longest time the attackers (people with the ladders) were always able to get above the walls defenders built. In a way it makes sense since the attackers were the first to use new techniques to make their ladders taller. Not much taller, mind you, just as tall as they needed to be to get over the walls. Of course, the same techniques used to make taller ladders were used to build taller walls, helping defenders close the gap. This back-and-forth went on incrementally for the first twenty or thirty years of cybersecurity history.
What's happened most recently, with the advent of AI-assisted attacks, is that all of a sudden the ladders have exploded in height, so they weren’t just a little taller than the walls, but a lot. One day the builders will figure out how to use the same technologies and techniques as the ladder builders to create higher walls, and some companies are already leveraging new cybersecurity capabilities in a way that makes their walls much taller. That's awesome, but most companies are not there yet.
Just because a 60-foot ladder exists doesn't mean that's what shows up at your five-foot wall, but it does mean a lot more people now have a five-foot ladder. That's why it's more important than ever that you do your best to uplevel your cybersecurity program.
Does that mean you need to have a 60-foot wall as soon as the 60-foot ladder exists? That would be really nice, but it's not always possible. Instead you should be doing everything you can with the basics that you have and the knowledge that you have to shore up the things that make your wall stronger. Things like identity management, vulnerability remediation, and advanced threat detection are ever more important.
And instead of doing these things at the pace that's currently possible, start leveraging AI to make them faster. Anthropic has released a very detailed blog post on ways to prepare for these taller ladders. Things like automating the triage of vulnerabilities to make sure that you're only dealing with the vulnerabilities that are truly important. There are industry tools out there for this, but you can also just leverage the AI that's already inherent in some of the tools you already own.
Most importantly, the recommendation we give to every customer is to stop treating this new era as a pure security problem. In reality, AI accelerated attacks have to be addressed by the entire technology team, engineering, infrastructure, and security. Working together as a team unlocks the velocity and visibility that can make the difference between a program that adapts effectively and a program that gets caught unprepared to deal with super fast adversaries.
Ladders will continue to get taller, and 60 foot walls are a good goal, but it's still much better to have a five-foot wall than a three-foot wall that's that much easier to get over.
