NetOps Response to Mythos Lies in Going Back to the Basics

Mythos has shown what the security community has long feared: AI can identify software flaws faster than most organizations can respond. Its autonomous vulnerability-discovery capabilities not only accelerate the search but also collapse the time to turn discovered flaws into functioning exploits from days or weeks to hours, with little skill required.

The data shows this trend. CVEs have steadily increased for years, but in the AI era, they are on track to exceed 60,000 by the end of 2026 — a 25% increase from 2025 alone. And hackers aren't waiting for defenders to catch up. Vulnerabilities are now being exploited within days or hours of disclosure, often before a patch is even released.

The average enterprise patch cycle was already struggling to keep up. What used to take weeks now must be done in hours. Speed has become the new risk, and network infrastructure is firmly in the spotlight.

In a recent article published in VMblog on September 4, 2026, BackBox CEO Rekha Shenoy explains where NetOps teams should focus and why.

Network administrators face an expanding gap between the speed of threats and their ability to respond. They are reactive out of necessity, not by choice. Mythos alters the calculation. Waiting is no longer a defensible strategy. The key question is: what does a proactive, machine-speed response look like?

It begins with five basics that NetOps teams already know, but too often leave unautomated.

You can't protect what you can't see. Kilter acts as a reliable network source by precisely modeling devices and their configurations to identify network components. Kilter offers a real-time, accurate device inventory, including manufacturer, model, firmware version, and configuration, which forms the foundation for everything else. Without it, vulnerability data remains abstract. Compliance checks become guesswork. AI-powered intelligence has nothing to base its insights on.

And, by integrating with Kilter, your CMDB is accurate by default. Device inventory syncs continuously from the live network state, including IP addresses, interfaces, OS version, and manufacturer, without manual reconciliation or duplicate data entry.

Vulnerability management only works if you systematically track and update your software and firmware. Kilter makes it simple to see which devices are running outdated versions, understand which CVEs affect your fleet, and have a clear upgrade plan in place before an exploit occurs, not after.

Kilter also streamlines the software update process to help address vulnerabilities quickly, limit downtime, and reduce after-hours work for an already overworked team.

Configuration drift is a silent threat. Devices that were compliant last quarter might not be today, especially as environments change. Kilter allows you to run continuous, automated checks against industry benchmarks and internal policies to identify drift before it leads to a breach.

With Kilter, you can close the loop between network events and your ITSM. Failures automatically open tickets. Updates are added without duplication. Resolutions close tickets without human input, and every step is logged for audit purposes.

Account management and access control are often overlooked in the CIS controls, and they are also common targets for attackers. Least-privilege access, credential hygiene, and regular access audits may not be exciting, but they effectively prevent attackers from gaining entry.

Kilter extends your PAM policies to network automation. Device credentials are fetched dynamically at runtime from your vault and never stored in Kilter, never embedded in scripts. Every automated action is linked to a verified identity.

Also, Kilter integrates with your enterprise identity provider via OIDC or SAML — including Okta, Azure AD, and PING — so network automation access is governed by the same policies as the rest of your IT estate.

When something goes wrong, and it will, especially at machine speed, so you always have a clean, verified state to return to, greatly reducing the impact of any incident. Kilter does this by validating each backup with a 5-step verification process, first during creation and again before restoration.

None of these fundamentals is new. When NetOps teams treat these controls as non-negotiable daily practices, they establish a security posture that endures, even as the threat landscape accelerates.

The problem isn't knowing what to do. It's doing it at scale, consistently, without burning out the team.

This is where the picture changes. Executing these fundamentals manually across a modern network with hundreds or thousands of devices from dozens of vendors is not feasible. Organizations are already asking their teams to do more with less. Without automation, the basics are often skipped, not because teams lack care, but because there aren't enough hours in the day.

Automation is essential, not optional. Before AI can be effective, it requires up-to-date, organized data about your network. This involves automating your device inventory, recording make, model, firmware version, and configuration in real time. It also includes automating backups to ensure you never rely on outdated data during recovery. These two applications alone significantly enhance your security and set the foundation for everything that follows.

Once automation manages the baseline, AI can begin providing real leverage.

Vulnerability prioritization at scale. In 2025, CISA identified 238 high-risk CVEs actively exploited in the wild. AI can compile and standardize vulnerability data from trusted sources — CISA, NIST, NVD, device manufacturer advisories — link it to your specific device inventory, and highlight what truly matters. Attackers focus on return on investment; your team should too.

Compliance checking with context. AI can run configuration drift checks across your entire fleet, identify deviations from industry standards and internal policies, and suggest remediation, including whether a fix applies to devices from various vendors running different operating systems.

Agentic workflows that scale. Chaining automations together, running pre-checks, executing upgrades, validating post-change configurations, and flagging issues for human review is where NetOps teams start to operate at machine speed. AI functions as an informed co-pilot, not an autonomous actor. Human-in-the-loop oversight remains essential where it matters.

The goal is not to hand the network over to AI. It's about using AI responsibly, with validated data and vetted workflows, so your team can make faster, more confident decisions. Self-healing AI that acts without oversight is how you get unplanned outages on top of security incidents. That's not resilience; that's trading one crisis for another.

Our answer to Mythos shouldn't introduce more chaos. The response is familiar; it should impose more control. Speed is the new risk. The response to speed is not to panic; it's to be prepared. And preparation, at its core, has never been more straightforward.

Discover how Kilter enables NetOps teams to automate network device lifecycle management and security operations; visit our platform page. Ready to get started? Request a demo to see Kilter in action.