Your Attack Surface Is Growing Faster Than Your Team Can Respond

Summary: A Bitdefender Labs analysis of 700,000 security incidents found that living-off-the-land techniques, which abuse legitimate tools, appeared in 84% of major attacks, and in the 2026 Bitdefender Cybersecurity Assessment, 38% of security professionals cited the overhead of maintaining hardening rules and exceptions as a barrier to shrinking their attack surface. The article argues that as AI helps attackers accelerate reconnaissance and exploitation, teams should shift toward continuous exposure management - identifying and reducing misconfigurations, exposed services, identity risks, and unnecessary access rather than relying mainly on detection and response.
What's compelling: Attackers used legitimate tools already present on victim systems in 84% of major attacks, so patching alone leaves the access those tools depend on untouched - and 38% of security professionals say the burden of maintaining hardening rules is itself what keeps their attack surface from shrinking.

Read the original at The Hacker News ↗