AI Is Making Software Cheaper to Attack. Defenders Need to Change the Price

Artificial intelligence is dramatically reducing the time and skill required for attackers to reverse engineer software and identify exploitable vulnerabilities, meaning that previously unattractive or obscure targets are now within reach of a much wider threat actor pool. Traditional patch management alone is no longer sufficient, as AI-assisted attackers can identify and weaponize new vulnerabilities faster than most organizations can respond. Organizations must shift toward a layered application protection strategy — including obfuscation, runtime protection, and hardening — to increase the effort and cost required for successful exploitation. This matters because the asymmetry between attack and defense is widening: if defenders do not actively make vulnerabilities harder to discover, the window of exposure becomes dangerously large even for well-patched environments.