Picture your Tuesday morning. You're triaging yesterday's alerts when the phone rings. It's your VP of Finance. Their systems are encrypted. During the initial triage, a first glance at the forensic timeline revealed that the attacker initiated file encryption 25 minutes prior to discovery.
Twenty-five minutes. That's less time than your average alert validation workflow takes.
Unit 42 data tells a story that should fundamentally reshape how you think about detection and response:
- 2021: Mean time to exfiltrate was 9 days
- 2023: Dropped to 2 days
- 2024: Fastest attacks completed in 25 minutes
That's 100x faster in three years. When nearly one in five data exfiltration events occur within the first hour of compromise, your incident response playbook is obsolete. By the time you've validated the alert and convened your response team, the attack is over.
In our latest demo video, Emran Mazumder, Sr Technical Marketing Manager at Palo Alto Networks, walks through a ransomware attack timeline—showing exactly where legacy endpoint protection platforms fail at each stage and where Cortex XDR intervenes to stop the attack before encryption begins.
The Cross-Surface Blind Spot
Traditional EPPs generate alerts, but alerts aren't defense: they're a to-do list for analysts who are already underwater. The real problem isn't volume. It's that each tool in your stack sees its narrow slice, while 70% of incidents span three or more attack surfaces.
Your endpoint protection sees legitimate system utilities executing. Your network monitoring sees authorized credentials on authorized protocols. Your DLP sees sanctioned file transfers. Each reports "no threat detected" while attackers move laterally using PowerShell, RDP, and standard transfer protocols.
An attack that starts with phishing, exploits an endpoint, moves laterally via network, exfiltrates through cloud, and uses stolen credentials; your EPP sees exactly one slice of that chain. To tools watching individual silos, this all looks like normal business activity.
When Speed Becomes the Primary Weapon
The acceleration isn't just about faster malware. AI-generated phishing creates thousands of variations with 78% open rates. Initial access brokers commoditized network entry; attackers buy credentials instead of spending weeks getting in. Living-off-the-land techniques bypass signature-based detection entirely. Automated lateral movement tools navigate your network faster than human defenders can react.
Your detection is still human speed. That's the gap.
What Defense Looks Like at Machine Speed
Cortex XDR delivers the fundamental shift modern threats demand:
Cross-surface correlation. Simultaneous analysis across endpoints, networks, cloud, email, and identity in a single platform - no manual log correlation required.
Behavioral Threat Protection. Identifies anomalous use of legitimate tools like PowerShell and WMI—catching attacks that look like "normal system administration" to signature-based detection.
Automated response in minutes. Actually isolates endpoints, blocks connections, and stops lateral movement before analysts see the incident. While traditional EPPs generate alerts, Cortex XDR contains the damage.
Root cause analysis in seconds. Maps the full attack path instantly, from initial email to current position, without manually correlating logs across a dozen tools.
Live Terminal and Search and Destroy. Direct endpoint access for immediate action. Find and eliminate threats everywhere: every compromised endpoint, suspicious process, malicious connection. In real time.
Independent, Layered Detection
The core risk to modern IT infrastructure is the structural fragility of siloed cybersecurity products. When your defense is built on isolated tools that don't share telemetry, a single point of failure becomes a total system collapse; if your primary detection engine is bypassed or goes offline, there is no integrated safety net to maintain visibility. Attackers thrive in these "seams" between disconnected products, exploiting the fact that siloed tools can't correlate cross-domain threats.
Cortex XDR delivers comprehensive protection that traditional EPPs can't match. With cross-surface correlation, behavioral threat protection, automated response, and AI-driven detection across endpoints, networks, cloud, email, and identity - it's built to stop modern attacks that move faster than human analysts can respond. Why layer multiple incomplete solutions when one platform can protect your entire attack surface?
Cortex XDR ends the fragmentation by acting as your single source of truth. Instead of managing a dozen different tools that don't speak the same language, Cortex XDR automatically stitches cross-domain data into a single, actionable incident. It doesn't just tell you something is wrong; it tells you exactly how an attack moved from an email link to a cloud server, allowing you to shut it down in one click.
Beyond Encryption: The Multiextortion Reality
86% of all major incidents now involve business disruption, operational downtime, or reputational damage. Modern attacks deploy quadruple extortion: encrypt systems, steal and threaten to publish data, DDoS infrastructure, harass customers and employees.
The median ransom demand hit $1.25 million in 2024. Supply chain attacks average $4.91 million in damages. Healthcare has seen 444 ransomware and data theft incidents, the highest of any U.S. critical infrastructure sector.
Perfect backups solve the encryption problem. They don't solve data theft, DDoS, or harassment. This is a "stop the attack before exfiltration" problem.
What Stops a 25-Minute Attack
Machine-speed defense requires, and Cortex XDR delivers:
Multilayer threat prevention. Exploit prevention blocks initial compromise. Behavioral Threat Protection catches living-off-the-land techniques. Dedicated ransomware defenses recognize exfiltration patterns. Each layer addresses different EPP failure points.
AI-driven detection across attack surfaces. Analyzes endpoints, networks, cloud, email, and identity simultaneously. Not signatures. Comprehensive correlation that catches what single-point visibility misses.
Automated response faster than attacker movement. Contains threats in minutes, isolating endpoints, blocking connections, preventing lateral movement. Alerts become incident reports, not to-do lists.
Proven performance. MITRE ATT&CK verified. Trusted by thousands of organizations worldwide.
Elite expertise when needed. Unit 42 Managed Detection and Response extends your team with experts who hunt threats 24/7. Proactive hunting, expert triage, hands-on containment, not just alerts. Cut MTTD and MTTR by up to 90%.
Can Your Stack Stop a 25-Minute Attack?
Not "detect it eventually." Stop it. Before exfiltration. Before encryption. During those critical minutes when containment still matters.
If you're not sure, see what Cortex XDR does differently:
- Behavioral analysis that catches AI-generated phishing before execution
- Exploit prevention that blocks zero-day attacks signatures don't recognize
- Cross-surface correlation that sees lateral movement endpoint-only tools miss
- Automated response that contains threats while traditional workflows validate alerts
The complete attack timeline shows you minute-by-minute where traditional EPPs fail and where Cortex XDR intervenes at each critical stage.
Take the Next Step: See Machine-Speed Defense in Action
The video walks through a real attack timeline, showing exactly where traditional EPP fails and where Cortex XDR intervenes at each critical stage.
Read the timeline: Download The 25-Minute Ransomware Attack whitepaper for the complete minute-by-minute breakdown of where protection matters most.
Learn more about Cortex XDR today!
If you think you've been breached: Contact Unit 42 Incident Response immediately at unit42-investigations@paloaltonetworks.com or +1.866.486.4842