From Overwhelmed to Control: How to move to Proactive Vulnerability Reduction

Melissa Bischoping, Sr. Director, Security & Product Design Research at Tanium, presents a stark view of the evolving cyber security landscape, emphasising the speed and sophistication of modern threats. She notes that attacker dwell time (the period they remain undetected), has dropped to just 1–2 days, while 81% of attacks exploit existing credentials rather than traditional malware, making detection far more challenging. Vulnerabilities continue to proliferate, with over 40,000 identified in 2024 and 574 already known to be exploited in 2025, on course to surpass 2024’s total of 881. AI-enabled attacks, including remote code execution via AI models, increase complexity, while new Australian regulations on ransomware and personal data breaches add further operational and financial risk.

Melissa critiques traditional vulnerability management approaches as high-volume, low-impact processes that overburden IT teams without reducing risk. She argues that scanning and cataloguing tens of thousands of vulnerabilities is unsustainable, as humans are the…