Dark Reading reports:
In 2025, cybercriminals needed less time to move from break-in to lateral movement across a network than it takes to watch a typical sitcom.
An analysis by CrowdStrike of threat activity last year found attackers took just 29 minutes on average to pivot to other systems after gaining an initial foothold in a victim environment, marking a 65% acceleration from the year before.
The fastest “breakout” as CrowdStrike termed it, happened in a mere 27 seconds, while in another instance an attacker began exfiltrating data four minutes after breaking in. “Speed is now the defining characteristic of intrusion, and it has fundamentally reshaped how adversaries evade detection,” CrowdStrike said in the 2026 edition of its Global Threat Report. For defenders, it means the time available to detect and respond to an intrusion has collapsed to a fraction of what it was just a few years ago and is shrinking even more.
Read more at Dark Reading.
