Preventative Security in the Era of “Speed to Breach”: Why Time to Detection Is a Losing Metric 

The cybersecurity landscape has entered a new race — one that defenders are increasingly losing. 

For years, “mean time to detect” (MTTD) and “mean time to respond” (MTTR) were the gold standards for evaluating security maturity. But in the era of speed to breach, when threat actors move at machine speed and hide in plain sight, those metrics no longer tell the whole story. 

The IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2025 report confirms this shift: attackers are executing coordinated, AI-powered campaigns at an unprecedented pace. They aren’t hacking in anymore — they’re logging in, exploiting valid credentials and trusted systems to move undetected across networks. 

The new measure of success isn’t how fast you detect, but whether you prevent compromise at all. 

Speed to Respond: Why the Gap Keeps Widening

Despite billions invested in detection and response technologies, attackers are accelerating faster than defenders can adapt. 

IBM’s analysts found a marked change in attacker behavior over the past 18–24 months — campaigns are now coordinated, automated and highly scalable. Threat actors are using generative AI to build fake websites, create deepfakes, write malicious code and conduct social engineering at industrial scale. 

The result is a fundamental imbalance in the defender-attacker dynamic. 

• Infostealer malware distributed via phishing increased 84% year over year in 2024, and early 2025 data suggests a 180% increase compared to 2023. 
• Thirty percent of all incidents involved valid accounts, meaning attackers bypassed controls by using stolen or purchased credentials rather than brute-forcing their way in. 
• Most organizations still lack a cyber crisis plan or playbooks for fast, coordinated response. 

These numbers reflect what CISOs already feel daily: defenders can’t keep pace with how fast breaches occur — or how long they go undetected.   

The Real Cost of Delay 

The IBM X-Force report underscores that the longer a threat remains undetected, the greater the risk. 

Attackers use extended dwell time to “live off the land,” stealing data weeks or months after the initial breach without triggering alerts. 

This stealth comes at a steep cost. 

In its Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025, IBM reports that the global average cost of a data breach reached $4.88 million in 2024, a new record. And in many cases, detection happens only after attackers have exfiltrated data, encrypted systems, or sold credentials on the dark web. 

While EDR and XDR solutions are essential, they operate within a reactive framework — finding and responding to what’s already in motion. But the modern adversary has removed that window. Time to detection doesn’t matter if the compromise occurs in seconds.   

Why Detection Delays Persist 

If detection technologies are more advanced than ever, why are dwell times still long and breach costs still rising? 

The answer lies in how attackers — and environments — have evolved. 

1. Credential compromise replaces brute force. 
   Nearly one-third of breaches now involve valid credentials. Attackers exploit password reuse, social engineering, and MFA fatigue to walk through the front door unnoticed. 
2. Hybrid and cloud complexity expands blind spots. 
   Fragmented visibility across SaaS, IaaS, and legacy systems delays detection and remediation. Attackers exploit these seams to move laterally without detection. 
3. Alert fatigue overwhelms analysts. 
   EDR and SIEM tools generate immense volumes of alerts — many false positives. Analysts struggle to identify real threats before damage occurs. 
4. Lack of crisis playbooks extends response. 
   IBM found most organizations lack predefined workflows for high-impact incidents, delaying containment, and increasing operational downtime. 

As IBM’s Global Managing Partner for Cybersecurity Services Mark Hughes summarized: 

“Cybercriminals are most often breaking in without breaking anything — capitalizing on identity and access management gaps proliferating from complex hybrid cloud environments.” 

When the enemy is invisible, speed alone isn’t enough. Organizations need to fundamentally change where and how they fight.   

Attackers Have Turned to Deception — and It’s Working 

A striking takeaway from the IBM X-Force report is how attackers now rely on deception to stay undetected. 

They mimic legitimate traffic, hide malicious activity in cloud workloads, and use AI to generate near-perfect phishing emails. 

IBM observed a major rise in cloud-hosted phishing, where adversaries use reputable cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure or GoDaddy to host malicious links. These campaigns exploit trust in well-known domains — and the reality that defenders can’t simply block them. 

At the same time, threat actors are using infostealers to quietly siphon credentials and tokens before detection, allowing seamless re-entry across environments. The trend toward “living off the land” tactics — abusing legitimate admin tools and system processes — allows attackers to avoid triggering behavioral or signature-based detection entirely. 

In short: attackers are playing the long game, using deception to outlast the defender’s attention span. 

They’ve weaponized trust — and time.   

Defenders Need to Turn Deception Against the Adversary 

To stop modern threats, defenders must adopt the same principle that makes attackers successful: unpredictability. Deception is no longer just an attacker’s weapon — it’s the key to regaining control of the engagement. 

A deception-focused security stance flips the dynamic by forcing attackers into uncertainty. When environments shift continuously, reconnaissance fails. Exploits miss their targets. Stolen credentials and pre-mapped system memory become useless. 

As IBM’s report advises, the future of security lies in proactive measures — “modernizing authentication management, plugging MFA holes, and conducting real-time threat hunting to uncover hidden threats before they expose sensitive data.” 

Morphisec takes that philosophy one step further — automating and prioritizing deception as a foundational defense layer.   

How Morphisec Redefines Prevention with Automated Moving Target Defense 

Morphisec was built for the speed-to-breach era. 

Its patented Automated Moving Target Defense (AMTD) technology shifts from reactive detection to preemptive prevention, neutralizing attacks before they can execute — without needing to identify or analyze them first. 

In fact, in a recent report Gartner suggested that AMTD is “an emerging game-changing technology for improving cyber defense…[that] effectively mitigates many known threats and is likely to mitigate most zero-day exploits within a decade, rotating risks further to humans and business processes.” 

Here’s how it works — and why it matters: 

• Stops unknown and zero-day attacks before execution. 
  AMTD dynamically morphs system memory and runtime environments, so attackers can’t locate or exploit fixed targets. Any attack code lands in a decoy environment and is instantly trapped or deflected. 
• Prevents credential theft and lateral movement. 
  Because attackers can’t predict or persist within a moving environment, credential harvesting, privilege escalation, and “living off the land” techniques fail before they start. 
• Reduces noise for detection tools. 
  By preventing malicious execution at the source, Morphisec dramatically lowers alert volumes for EDR and XDR systems, enabling analysts to focus on real anomalies. 
• Complements — not replaces — existing defenses. 
  Morphisec integrates seamlessly with EDR, SIEM, and SOAR solutions, fortifying the stack and maximizing ROI on existing security investments. 

Where detection tools react, Morphisec prevents. 

Where others chase alerts, Morphisec denies the attacker the opportunity to strike.   

The New Metric: Time to Prevent 

As attacks become more automated and deceptive, measuring “time to detect” has lost its meaning. 

By the time a breach is detected, the damage is already done — credentials stolen, data exfiltrated, systems compromised. 

The future belongs to organizations that measure time to prevent instead. 

A prevention-first posture, built on deception-based defense, ensures adversaries never gain a foothold, no matter how fast or stealthy their approach. 

In the words of IBM’s research: 

“The longer a threat remains undetected, the greater the risk.” 

Morphisec helps eliminate that risk entirely — by ensuring attacks never succeed in the first place. 

Prevent attackers from winning the race to breach. Download The Ultimate Ransomware Strategy: Enabling Preemptive Cybersecurity Through Zero Trust with AMTD white paper to learn how your organization can speed time to prevent with a preemptive and deception-based approach. 

About the author

Brad LaPorte

Chief Marketing Officer

Brad LaPorte is a seasoned cybersecurity expert and former military officer specializing in cybersecurity and military intelligence for the United States military and allied forces. With a distinguished career at Gartner as a top-rated research analyst, Brad was instrumental in establishing key industry categories such as Attack Surface Management (ASM), Extended Detection & Response (XDR), Digital Risk Protection (DRP), and the foundational elements of Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM). His forward-thinking approach led to the inception of Secureworks’ MDR service and the EDR product Red Cloak—industry firsts. At IBM, he spearheaded the creation of the Endpoint Security Portfolio, as well as MDR, Vulnerability Management, Threat Intelligence, and Managed SIEM offerings, further solidifying his reputation as a visionary in cybersecurity solutions years ahead of its time.