Meet watchTowr at THREATCON1 2026

In 2020, the average time to weaponize a known vulnerability was measured in weeks. Today, high-profile vulnerabilities are weaponized in hours. This session breaks down what that shift means in practice and how to operate in a world where AI has industrialized the reproduction of vulnerabilities faster than organizations can begin to patch. The basic reality is well documented. Motivated and capable adversaries reverse engineer patches, diff to identify what changed, and build exploits in parallel to their target organization’s patching process, betting on being faster. This has historically required rare, niche skills. But it is 2026. That skill is no longer rare. AI is rapidly democratizing vulnerability reproduction, automating significant parts of the work, and shrinking the time required. By the end of the session, the audience will leave with three key takeaways: i) What it means to operate in a world where vulnerabilities are weaponized within hours, not months, and how that changes response timelines. ii) How to prioritize vulnerabilities based on real-world exploitability, exposure, and attacker activity, not severity scores alone. iii) How to apply and validate mitigations that reduce exploitability and buy the time needed for safe, controlled remediation