Ep. 349 AI Is Changing the Speed of Federal Cyber Attacks Today

Malicious cyber-attacks are increasingly driven by AI and identity vulnerabilities. Today, we sat down with Adam Meyers from CrowdStrike to detail this acceleration and offer some solutions.

Attack Acceleration

Meyers highlights a significant decrease in breakout time, which is the duration between initial access and lateral movement.

• In 2024, the average breakout time was 48 minutes.
• By 2025, this decreased to an average of 29 minutes, with the fastest recorded at 27 seconds.

One reason for these attacks is strategic. Current defenses often focus heavily on endpoints while neglecting identity and cloud control planes. Specifically, organizations must monitor many issues.

For example, unauthorized users provisioning new multi-factor authentication (MFA) devices. Also, impossible travel scenarios where logins occur from disparate geographic locations in impossible timeframes.

During the interview, Meyers expands on the concept of "cross-domain hunting." They must constantly switch between roles—such as threat hunting and incident response—across various tools and screens, contributing to burnout rates comparable to air traffic controllers or EMTs.

Emerging Trends

AI is driving a massive increase in vulnerability discovery; CVE publications in June 2026 were up 96% compared to June 2025. Additionally, machines now generate two and a half times as many detections as humans.

The conclusion is that AI will be able to fight AI in cybersecurity. It may be a rocky road, but it will balance the threat in the end.