Uplifted Attackers, Human Defenders: The Cyber Offense-Defense Balance for Trailing-Edge Organizations
Benjamin Murphy, Twm Stone

TL;DR
This paper discusses how AI advancements threaten trailing-edge organizations with increased cyberattack risks and emphasizes the need for faster, more resilient defenses to counteract evolving threats.
Contribution
It highlights the vulnerabilities of legacy, trailing-edge organizations in the AI-driven cyber threat landscape and proposes solutions to enhance their cybersecurity defenses.
Findings
AI increases attack frequency on trailing-edge firms
AI enables earlier exploit development by attackers
Organizations must adopt faster remediation strategies
Abstract
Advances in AI are widely understood to have implications for cybersecurity. Articles have emphasized the effect of AI on the cyber offense-defense balance, and commentators can be found arguing either that cyber will privilege attackers or defenders. For defenders, arguments are often made that AI will enable solutions like formal verification of all software--and for some well-equipped companies, this may be true. This conversation, however, does not match the reality for most companies. "Trailing-edge organizations," as we term them, rely heavily on legacy software, poorly staff security roles, and struggle to implement best practices like rapid deployment of security patches. These decisions may be the result of corporate inertia, but may also be the result of a seemingly-rational calculation that attackers may not bother targeting a firm due to lack of economic incentives, and as a…
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