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National Life Group CISO expects more vulnerabilities in six months than in thirty years

National Life Group CISO Becky Palmer says agentic AI resolves four of five SOC investigations and urges AI-speed patching practices.

In a Help Net Security interview, National Life Group CISO Becky Palmer argues frontier AI will uncover more vulnerabilities in the next six months than in the last thirty years, compressing time from disclosure to weaponized exploit from weeks to hours. She reports agentic AI in her SOC resolves 4 of 5 investigations without human escalation, saving hours daily on enrichment and summarization. She also details compensating controls such as virtual patching, least-privilege restrictions, and heightened monitoring, plus procurement questions to separate working AI products from wrappers.

Help Net Security · 15d agoIndustry

Ransomware attackers are zeroing in on mid-market companies

Black Kite found mid-market firms were 73% of disclosed ransomware victims in North America and Europe from January 2023 to June 2026.

Black Kite analyzed 13,336 publicly disclosed ransomware and data-extortion incidents with known revenue between January 2023 and June 2026, finding mid-market companies (annual revenue $10M-$1B) accounted for 73% of victims in North America and Europe, consistently between 72% and 75%. Manufacturing was the most affected sector, followed by professional, scientific, and technical services and construction. Of more than 120,000 assessed mid-market organizations, 54.7% had at least one significant patch-management issue on a public-facing system, over a quarter had a known-exploited vulnerability, and nearly one-third had stealer-log credential findings.

Help Net Security · 24d agoRansomware