Qualys CISO on What Security Teams Can Do as Exploit Campaigns Grow
Help Net Security, Thursday, October 29th, 2026
Qualys CISO Nathan Smolenski explains how security teams can handle rising AI-found vulnerabilities with real-time prioritization.
In a Help Net Security interview, Qualys CISO Nathan Smolenski says AI is increasing both the volume and severity of discovered vulnerabilities, including chaining low-severity bugs into exploitable paths.
He recommends tracking average window of exposure instead of MTTR and moving to real-time, evidence-based prioritization, noting Qualys research found only 0.74% of 2025 vulnerabilities were remotely exploitable and actively weaponized.
For autonomous remediation he advises building trust through asset tiering, human approval guardrails, virtual patching and rollback.
He also stresses separating AI suggestions from validation and requiring verifiable evidence that a fix worked.