Traditional Patching Is Not Viable in the AI Era: CrowdStrike

CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company that offers a platform for endpoint protection, threat detection and response, threat intelligence, and AI-powered security.

Q: How would you describe CrowdStrike’s position in the Latin American market, and how would you describe the threat landscape in the region?

A: We remain dedicated to our core mission of stopping breaches. Understanding the adversary continues to be a key part of that, as cybersecurity is inherently an adversary problem rather than a malware problem. In the Latin American market, we see a significant acceleration of threats driven by the adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs). According to our latest Global Threat Report, the average breakout time has decreased from 48 minutes to 29 minutes, while the fastest recorded breakout time dropped from 51 seconds to 27 seconds. This environment positions CrowdStrike as a critical strategic partner, leveraging threat intelligence to help organizations outpace increasingly rapid threat actors across the region.

Q: What factors continue to provide CrowdStrike with a competitive advantage? 

A: Our competitive advantage stems from our deep understanding of adversaries and how they operate, rather than treating cybersecurity merely as a technology-versus-technology battle. While cutting-edge technology is essential, we combine our platform with human expertise, such as our proactive threat hunting services, to deliver superior efficacy and speed. Furthermore, CrowdStrike remains strictly focused on the core domains required to stop a breach, including the endpoint, identity, cloud, and data security, which provides comprehensive protection that isolated tools cannot match.

Q: What are the main needs that lead your clients to turn to you? 

A: While endpoint protection remains the foundational entry point for all industries, we are seeing a major shift toward cloud security and identity protection across the region. Organizations increasingly realize that securing cloud infrastructure is as vital as protecting physical workstations, moving past basic compliance toward active threat detection and mitigation. Additionally, because modern attackers frequently exploit valid credentials to log into systems rather than breaking through traditional defenses, diverse sectors are turning to us to safeguard their identity domains and halt lateral movement.

Q: The Falcon platform has expanded far beyond endpoint protection. How do capabilities such as identity, cloud, threat intelligence, and observability complement each other? 

A: Managing isolated security tools requires correlating disconnected data points, which wastes critical response time when facing rapid adversaries. The Falcon platform consolidates all telemetry into a single console, providing unprecedented operational agility. By integrating identity, cloud, threat intelligence, and observability, we power an agentic Security Operations Center (SOC) where AI agents automatically triage detections and conduct investigations. This approach ensures that human analysts receive fully contextualized data to react instantly, or allow the platform to execute automated mitigation protocols.

Q: Speed of response is one of the key differentiators in cybersecurity. What role do GenAI, agents, and threat intelligence play in this scenario? 

A: Threat intelligence provides the crucial context on adversary behavior, while GenAI and autonomous agents serve as force multipliers to accelerate response times. These AI agents handle the time-consuming tasks of gathering information and investigating incidents across multiple vectors within seconds. By automating the preliminary stages of the lifecycle of a threat, this ecosystem ensures that our defenses operate at the same speed as the attacker, significantly reducing the window of vulnerability.

Q: Why does CrowdStrike prioritize the “understanding the person before the technology” approach? 

A: One cannot design an effective security strategy or build robust defenses without understanding how the human adversary operates behind the tools. Our data shows a consistent decline in malware usage, with 82% of attacks relying on legitimate processes and valid credentials across cloud environments, development pipelines, and applications. CrowdStrike began as a threat intelligence company before launching endpoint protection because it is impossible to solve a problem without understanding its origin. Latin American organizations must adopt this philosophy to ensure their security investments target actual adversary behaviors rather than outdated, malware-centric threats.

Q: AI reduces the time required to exploit a vulnerability from days or hours to minutes. What does this shift imply for traditional risk management strategies within companies? 

A: The most profound implication is that technical limits no longer exist for adversaries. Generative models allow individuals with minimal programming knowledge to create sophisticated scripts in Python, PowerShell, or Bash simply by using natural language prompts. This democratization of capabilities levels the playing field for lower-level threat actors, rapidly expanding the pool of attackers who can execute highly technical operations. 

Additionally, the timeline between the discovery of a vulnerability and the creation of a functional exploit has shrunk dramatically. Traditional risk management strategies that rely on lengthy patching cycles are no longer viable because weaponized code becomes available in minutes. Organizations must pivot from legacy patching schedules to risk-based prioritization, focusing resources strictly on vulnerabilities that have active, validated exploits in the wild. 

Finally, the rapid adoption of corporate AI applications introduces an entirely new attack surface that requires constant monitoring. Phenomena such as shadow AI and techniques like prompt injection create unprecedented risks. Defensive strategies must evolve to monitor these AI data channels and protect the integrity of corporate models.

Q: There is growing concern about the use of AI by cybercriminals. Does the greatest risk come from entirely new attacks or from the accelerated exploitation of existing known vulnerabilities through AI? 

A: The greatest risk does not stem from a specific category of vulnerability, but from the reality that organizations must treat all threats as potentially unknown behavioral deviations. Relying on traditional signature-based defenses to identify known vulnerabilities or malware is obsolete, especially since malware is involved in only 18% of modern incidents. 

Our approach prioritizes continuous behavioral monitoring across both first-party and third-party telemetry, using advanced threat hunting to detect anomalies before a formal alert is even triggered. While patching known vulnerabilities based on active exploitation remains critical, the primary focus must be on identifying and responding to behavioral shifts, regardless of whether the entry point is a known exploit or a compromised credential.

Q: The shortage of specialized talent remains one of the main challenges in the sector. How is the balance between automation, AI, and human capabilities evolving within security operations centers? 

A: Automation and AI agents will inevitably absorb repetitive, time-consuming tasks, such as analyzing command lines and reading scripts, which no longer make sense for humans to perform manually. However, this shift will not eliminate human professionals; rather, it will redefine their roles toward building, validating, and auditing these autonomous systems to ensure accuracy and prevent model hallucinations. The industry will transition from demanding traditional technical analysts to seeking professionals who specialize in optimizing AI agents to maximize operational speed. 

Q: What will be CrowdStrike's strategic priorities for Latin America in the coming years and what opportunities do you see in the Mexican market? 

A: Our primary strategic priority revolves around accelerating platform performance and operational speed through advanced AI optimization and the expansion of our agentic SOC. We are deeply committed to enhancing our next-generation identity protection, moving beyond behavioral detection to implement continuous, real-time risk evaluation. This framework enables the dynamic revocation of access privileges mid-session if an anomaly is detected, which effectively enforces a true zero-privilege architecture to protect critical assets like cloud control panels. 

We are also focusing heavily on browser-level security and cloud infrastructure protection, which represent immense growth opportunities in Mexico and the broader Latin American region. As corporate operations shift entirely to web-based environments, the browser has become a primary target for info-stealer malware executing session hijacking. We aim to elevate the cybersecurity maturity of Mexican enterprises, closing the gap between rapid cloud adoption and sophisticated adversary tactics.