Threat actors including state sponsored hackers leverage AI and agentic models to drastically speed up initial access, vulnerability discovery, and malware creation. The report shows that AI shortens credential discovery, lateral movement, and data exfiltration from days to mere minutes. Phishing incidents tripled from 7% to 23% due to adversaries using AI for large-scale, personalized social engineering. Government agencies faced the highest volume of attacks (27%), followed by IT sectors and research institutions. In essence, coporate and governmental security teams must quickly adopt advanced, AI-powered defense tools to match the speed and scale of automated threats.

Full report : According to Microsoft’s Digital Defense Report, artificial intelligence is compressing attack lifecycles from days to minutes.