Remember this number: 97 billion. That is how many exploitation attempts were attempted in 2024. The dramatic uptick in volume is attributed to multiple reasons including:

• Increased use of automation, commoditized tools, and AI to scan and exploit at industrial scale
• Cybercrime‑as‑a‑Service markets provide ready‑made exploit kits and infrastructure, so even low‑skill actors can generate automated attacks at scale
• Attack targets have broadened, expanding far beyond a handful of traditional industries.
• The targeting of IoT devices has greatly expanded, thus broadening the attack surface being exploited

New Exploits, Same Vulnerabilities

What may be even more surprising than the volume of attempts is what attackers are exploiting. Despite the headlines, zero‑day vulnerabilities account for only a small fraction of observed activity. In reality, threat actors repeatedly go after the same well‑known, unpatched CVEs. For instance, the Windows SMB Information Disclosure Vulnerability (CVE-2017-0147) represented more than 25% of exploitation attempts in 2024.

Detection Is Getting Harder

At the same time, exploits and intrusions are becoming harder to detect. Cybercriminals increasingly rely on trusted tools and protocols to escalate privileges and deepen their access, all while blending into normal operations to avoid detection. They are investing in their craft and their assortment of tools to make their efforts more effective. In some cases, organizations are only aware of suspicious behavior after it is flagged by a third party.

Attackers Are Outpacing Defenders

The uncomfortable reality is that attackers are investing in advanced automation, reconnaissance tools, and stealth techniques designed for speed, invisibility, and massive scale, allowing them to evolve faster than traditional defenses. Attackers are evolving faster than defenses. By the time most IT teams detect a breach, attackers have already exfiltrated data, achieved their objectives, and vanished without a trace.

Evolve Your Defenses with FortiNDR

To keep pace with an increasingly sophisticated adversary, your defenses must also dynamically evolve. The first step is recognizing that traditional “tried‑and‑true” security tools are no longer enough. The threat landscape has changed dramatically, and you can’t bring conventional, reactive tools to an AI‑powered fight. Fortinet’s FortiNDR AI capabilities are what you need to regain the upper hand of the cybersecurity struggle. Here are some examples:

• While security data volumes exceed human analysis capacity, AI can process millions of events to find the critical few that matter
• AI detects threats in minutes vs. weeks to prevent data loss and limit damage
• Unlike signature-based detection that only catches known attacks, machine learning establishes behavioral baselines for users, devices, and applications

By baselining “normal” traffic and alerting on anomalies, FortiNDR detects lateral movement, command‑and‑control, and data exfiltration even when attackers use trusted tools and protocols to blend in.

FortiNDR Learns Your Network

Attackers improve their capabilities by learning from the networks they target. FortiNDR improves its ability to protect your network by learning from your network as well, spotting new tactics earlier, and then feeding those insights back into automated response and your broader security fabric. It learns and adapts so that when adversaries inevitably change tools and techniques, FortiNDR can still identify anomalies like new lateral movement paths, unusual protocol use, or emerging command and control functions.

Expand Your Visibility and Detection

If attackers are expanding in scale and taking advantage of increased attack surfaces, it is time to expand your security efforts as well. FortiNDR helps you expand your security efforts by collecting and analyzing network traffic and metadata across the full breath of Layer 2 through Layer 7. That includes the monitoring of things like:

• DNS queries and responses to detect DNS tunneling and other forms of command‑and‑control activity.
• MAC addresses, VLANs, IP traffic patterns, routing behaviors, and network segmentation violations
• RDP and SSH sessions for unauthorized access, brute force attempts, and lateral movement
• File sharing activity and SMB traffic that may indicate or ransomware behavior or data exfiltration,
• Encrypted traffic analysis to identify malicious communications hidden in HTTPS

Expanded Collaboration

Expanded visibility is expanded by expanded collaboration way, which is why FortiNDR isn’t designed to replace your existing tools. It works by sharing what it sees on the network with them, including firewalls, EDR, NAC, SIEM, and XDR so that everything can work together and not in silos.

• Streams FortiNDR alerts and events into the SIEM so they appear alongside other logs, giving richer context for correlations and reports
• Flags risky or compromised devices so NAC can enforce policies that quarantine devices to restricted VLANs or blocking network access entirely until remediation is complete.
• Sends alerts about suspicious network behavior tied to specific devices so EDR can flag or isolate the endpoints
• Feeds high value network detections into XDR platforms to help build a complete attack story that improves accuracy and accelerates responsive actions

For organizations with an existing Fortinet infrastructure, FortiNDR enhances their security, improving both their effectiveness and the ROI of their security investments.

Conclusion

Just like in a game of chess, the first move often favors the attacker. FortiNDR helps negate this advantage by giving you deeper visibility into what’s happening on your network and enabling multiple security tools to detect and act together in a more accurate and accelerated manner. Find out how FortiNDR can help you close the gap between attacker speed by expanding your defenses and staying ahead of today’s evolving threats.

Next Steps: As you’ve read, cybersecurity threats move quickly. Your defenses should move faster.
This tech brief from WEI further explores how Fortinet FortiNDR delivers advanced network detection and response capabilities that work in any environment without vendor lock-in or costly infrastructure overhauls.

Download: Close Security Gaps Fast with FortiNDR’s Standalone Advantage