Artificial intelligence is speeding up timelines for cyber attacks, a new report has found, creating what the authors call a widening “cybersecurity speed gap” between bad actors and defense efforts.
The report from Booz Allen Hamilton, published this month, shows that cyber criminals are now moving from initial access to broader system compromise in less than 30 minutes on average — and sometimes in seconds. And attackers are using AI as a collaborator in their speedier attacks. For example, AI is helping cyber criminals quickly create realistic phishing emails, research multiple targets in minutes and write malicious code even if they lack coding skills.
Read more…
Source: Government Technology News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Attackers pick Levi’s pockets in social engineering attack
August 10, 2026
Levi Strauss is investigating a data breach after attackers used social engineering to access three employees’ work computers. In a regulatory filing, the jeans maker said the intruders accessed and exfiltrated what it described only as “certain corporate information.” Levi’s said it spotted the intrusion, kicked off its incident response procedures, brought in outside cybersecurity experts, and managed ...
- StopRansomware: Gunra Ransomware
August 10, 2026
Gunra is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) used by affiliates to target government, critical infrastructure, and other organizations. The Gunra ransomware variant first appeared in 2025 and expanded to RaaS operations in 2026. The actors leverage a double-extortion model, both encrypting data and threatening to publish exfiltrated data to a dedicated leak site (DLS) if the ransom ...
- Top US hedge funds targeted by major vishing campaign
August 9, 2026
Some of the biggest US hedge funds and law firms have been targeted by a highly sophisticated data breach and extortion campaign, conducted by a group of criminals previously known as BlackFile, experts have warned. BlackFile (or Redact, as the group is now calling itself) has a relatively simple modus operandi, also used by ShinyHunters – ...
- Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager
August 9, 2026
Turns out the fastest way to get a company to consider paying a ransom isn’t calling the CEO – it’s targeting the 46-year-old IT manager. That’s according to Zscaler, whose ThreatLabz researchers tracked 351 victims across 334 organizations caught up in a single ransomware campaign over the course of a month. The data suggests today’s ransomware crews have ...
- Intrusion at US healthcare software provider puts 3.8M people’s data at risk
August 7, 2026
A US healthcare software provider has admitted that hackers may have made off with sensitive data belonging to 3.8 million people, making it the largest healthcare breach reported to regulators so far this year. The attack dates to last October, when Ohio-based medical software maker Unlimited Technology Systems (UTS) detected someone poking around its commercial datacenter. ...
- Swiss government says SharePoint-linked data breach affected hundreds of accounts
August 7, 2026
Cybercriminals broke into the IT network of the Swiss government and stole data from roughly 200 accounts. As a result, the Swiss government disconnected some of its servers from the wider internet and launched an investigation. In an announcement, the Swiss government said that on July 28 2026 its security specialists noticed “abnormalities” in the Federal ...

