News brief: Attackers gain speed in cybersecurity race
News brief: Attackers gain speed in cybersecurity race
Publish Date: 2026-02-27 18:07:00
Source Domain: www.techtarget.com
Just 15 years ago, the median dwell time of a cyberattack — the duration an attacker remains within their victim’s system, spanning from the initial signs of compromise to the moment of detection — was 416 days, according to Mandiant. That metric has steadily decreased over the past decade and a half, falling to 11 days in 2024.
Reasons for dwell time decreases are twofold. Enterprise security monitoring, logging and alerting capabilities have become stronger and more effective, while certain attacks — such as ransomware, in which malicious actors attempt to extort victims rapidly — are detected much more quickly. Yet these points are countered by overworked or under-skilled security teams and immature incident response plans, as well as by sophisticated advanced persistent threats that use stealth and living-off-the-land techniques to evade detection for long periods.
Cybersecurity is a tale as old as time: As enterprise defenses get stronger, adversaries up the ante on attacks. Rinse and repeat.
As this week’s featured news highlights, attackers continue to improve their speed. Organizations must, in turn, step up their game to monitor, detect and eradicate threats faster than ever before.
AI revolutionizes cyberattack speed and sophistication
AI is transforming the cyberattack landscape, enabling attackers to accelerate lateral movement, data exfiltration and phishing campaigns, according to a ReliaQuest report. In 2025, lateral movement times dropped 29% to an average of 34 minutes, while data exfiltration times fell to just six minutes — a decrease from four hours in 2024.
ReliaQuest researchers pointed to AI-powered tools such as BoaLoader malware, which they said “reflects the first major convergence of AI-assisted development, social engineering and traditional cybercrime.”
Reports from IBM and Resilience had similar findings, highlighting AI’s role in compressing decision cycles and scaling attacks, while a Sophos report cautioned that…
