205 days. That's now the average time security teams take to remediate critical cybersecurity vulnerabilities —
nearly seven full months. Although the number of vulnerabilities continues to climb at a staggering rate, with a recent report identifying 9,444 new vulnerabilities in the first half of 2021, the surprising reality is that most vulnerabilities companies face today aren’t new.
At this point, it's clear that hackers have overwhelmed all but the most forward-thinking cybersecurity professionals, creating exploits at a rate that has left enterprises and governments with significant backlogs of unaddressed risk. Network device vulnerabilities increased by nearly 20% year-over-year, in part due to the rise in VPN vulnerabilities, while operational technology (OT) vulnerabilities were up almost 50% compared with the first half of 2020.