The AI edge that helps defenders is helping attackers just as much
Enterprise security is reorganizing around AI detection and response, as autonomous agents move from pilot projects into production systems that can act, chain tasks together and improvise. The same capabilities that make agents useful to defenders make them equally useful to adversaries, and that symmetry is forcing boards to ask harder questions about what their security teams can actually see.
That pressure has landed on cybersecurity companies with unusual speed over the past year, turning agent oversight from a research topic into a purchasing decision. Attacks assembled by cooperating agents have shown what the next phase of the threat landscape looks like — CrowdStrike’s “2026 Global Threat Report” found the average eCrime breakout time has already fallen to 29 minutes, with the fastest intrusion clocked at 27 seconds — according to Michael Sentonas (pictured), president of CrowdStrike Holdings Inc.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve never seen anything move so fast,” Sentonas said. “We had boards, entire boards, come into our briefing center in California because they wanted to understand what to do. I had lunch with the CEO of a really large bank. He wanted to know was his security team doing enough and was he supporting the CISO enough, because they’re just so worried about what’s going on.”
