Unit 42 warns AI has shifted balance of power from defenders to attackers

Unit 42 warns that the emergence of agentic and frontier AI models constitutes a generational shift in cybersecurity, allowing attackers to conduct machine-speed attacks that outpace existing defenses. The briefing cites an ongoing investigation where an attacker used an agentic framework to exploit 50 applications and other weaknesses across an enterprise in less than 10 hours, and highlights AI-driven changes across the attack chain, identity compromise, supply-chain risk, and scaled malware capabilities—concluding organizations are largely unprepared for this transformation.