Cybersecurity firm Sophos processed seven major incident response cases in a single week, a volume of work that typically takes the company three months to resolve. This surge in activity has created systemic bottlenecks across the industry, known among practitioners as “Black October,” with response firm MoxFive warning that newly breached companies may now face waits of up to five days for emergency help to mitigate attacks.
Security executives warn that AI is allowing attackers to identify and exploit software vulnerabilities more rapidly than human defenders can deploy patches. This capability gap has already impacted core infrastructure, including an Oct 21 breach of the Quanum LSM platform at Quest Diagnostics, which forced medical providers to return to paper-based requisitions for laboratory tests to maintain patient care.
