Cybersecurity Founders Say AI Gives Attackers a Speed and Scale Advantage
Summary
At Fortune’s Cyber 60 event, cybersecurity founders said AI is widening attackers’ speed and scale advantage. Armadin’s Evan Peña claimed it can scan a Fortune 500 company’s 10,000+ external systems in hours; the event unveiled Fortune’s 2027 Cyber 60 list.
Key points
- Armadin cofounder Evan Peña said AI can scan a Fortune 500 company’s more than 10,000 externally facing systems within hours; the article presents this as his claim, not an independently verified finding.
- Peña cited vulnerabilities involving Citrix, BeyondTrust, PHP and Node.js emerging within a three- to four-week period as evidence of the fast-moving threat environment.
- 7AI CEO Lior Div said the time between security events would continue to shrink.
- Arctic Wolf CEO Nick Schneider said attackers can act without the organizational delays associated with budgets, approvals and change control.
- The event at the New York Stock Exchange marked the release of Fortune’s 2027 Cyber 60 list of cybersecurity startups, including Chainguard, Irregular and Jazz.
Article Details
- Event Type
- Cybersecurity panel discussion at Fortune’s Cyber 60 event on AI and the changing balance between attackers and defenders.
- Impact
- Evan Peña said AI allows attackers to scan a Fortune 500 company’s external attack surface—potentially more than 10,000 systems—in hours, a task he said would previously have taken much longer. Lior Div and Nick Schneider also described shrinking response windows and organizational barriers that may disadvantage defenders. The article reports these as speakers’ assessments; it describes no specific cyber incident or confirmed organizational impact.
People
Evan PeñaArmadin cofounder and chief offensive security officer who discussed how AI may increase the speed and scale of attackers’ external attack-surface scanning.Lior Div7AI cofounder and CEO who discussed the shrinking time between cybersecurity events and the vulnerability of digital systems.Nick SchneiderArctic Wolf CEO who discussed how organizational processes may leave defenders less able to operate at the speed of attackers.
Vendors
7AI“We’re living in a continuum,” said Lior Div, cofounder and CEO of 7AI, on one panel. “…The gap between events is going to shrink and shrink and shrink.”Arctic Wolf“The biggest thing is the attackers have no barriers,” Nick Schneider, CEO of cybersecurity unicorn Arctic Wolf, said onstage. “An organization has to go through change control. They have to get budgets, convince theirArmadinIn cybersecurity, that’s reality right now, Evan Peña, cofounder and chief offensive security officer at startup Armadin, told me onstage Wednesday at Fortune, Lightspeed, and AWS’s Cyber 60 event.