Real World Risks: The Synack Red Team Breaks Down the 2026 State of Vulnerabilities Report

The 2026 State of Vulnerabilities Report is Synack's annual analysis of real exploitable vulnerabilities found across customer environments by vetted Synack Red Team researchers. It surfaces trends in vulnerability categories, remediation timelines, and the evolving attack surface — based on validated findings, not theoretical scanner output.

According to research conducted with Omdia, organizations test only 32% of their exposed attack surface on average — meaning 68% goes untested. That untested gap is effectively a target list for adversaries, who operate without scope restrictions.

In 2025, three categories saw significant increases: remote code execution (+39%), brute force attacks (+17%), and content injection (+8%). These categories share a common theme — they all focus on gaining access past the perimeter, signaling a shift in attacker strategy.

The time-to-exploit window has shrunk from months to hours. In some cases, AI-enabled adversaries are exploiting vulnerabilities before they are even publicly disclosed — a negative time-to-exploit. This dramatically raises the stakes for security teams focused on faster detection and remediation.

AI accelerates both attack and defense. Adversaries use AI to automate reconnaissance and scanning at machine speed across thousands of assets. On the defense side, AI-assisted tools like Sara AI Pentesting help expand coverage, map attack surfaces continuously, and surface signal faster — while human researchers handle creative exploitation, business logic flaws, and novel vulnerabilities that AI cannot replicate.

Sara is Synack's Autonomous Red Agent — agentic AI built to run continuous attack surface mapping, reconnaissance, and known-pattern vulnerability detection at machine speed. Sara is designed to work alongside the Synack Red Team, not replace it: AI handles scale and coverage while human researchers focus on depth, creative exploitation, and business logic attacks.