Exhibitor Press Releases

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the way organizations discover vulnerabilities, analyze attack paths, and identify security exposures. While this increased visibility represents a significant advancement for the cybersecurity industry, Rootshell Security believes it is also creating a new challenge for security teams: understanding which risks matter most.

According to Shaun Peapell, VP Global Threat Services at Rootshell Security, the industry's focus is beginning to shift from discovery toward prioritization as AI-assisted testing technologies dramatically increase the volume of findings available to security teams.

For more than a decade, cybersecurity programs have invested heavily in improving visibility through vulnerability scanners, attack surface management platforms, threat intelligence feeds, penetration testing, and exposure management technologies. Today, AI-assisted testing is accelerating those capabilities further, enabling organizations to uncover more vulnerabilities, correlate more data, and identify potential attack paths faster than ever before.

However, Peapell argues that visibility alone does not reduce risk.

"AI is helping us discover more vulnerabilities, correlate more findings, and identify potential attack paths faster than ever before," said Shaun Peapell, VP Global Threat Services at Rootshell Security.

"That's a significant advancement for the industry. But discovering vulnerabilities isn't the same as understanding risk. Security teams still need to determine what is genuinely exploitable, how attackers would leverage those weaknesses in practice, and which issues deserve immediate attention. That's where human expertise remains critical."

As AI-assisted security technologies continue to mature, Rootshell believes many organizations are approaching a point where visibility is no longer the primary constraint. Instead, security teams are increasingly challenged by the volume of information they must assess, contextualize, and operationalize.

The company describes this as a growing prioritization challenge.

From an offensive security perspective, organizations frequently possess large volumes of vulnerability data but struggle to identify which findings represent realistic attack opportunities. As AI improves discovery capabilities, the gap between identifying vulnerabilities and effectively prioritizing them is becoming increasingly apparent.

According to Peapell, successful security programs will increasingly be measured not by the number of vulnerabilities they identify, but by their ability to continuously validate risk, prioritize effectively, and reduce the attacker's window of opportunity.

This shift is contributing to growing demand for continuous security testing models that provide ongoing validation, exploit-aware prioritization, and visibility into how risk evolves over time. Unlike traditional point-in-time assessments, continuous testing enables organizations to reassess findings as exploitability changes, monitor evolving attack surfaces, and maintain a more accurate understanding of real-world exposure.

Rootshell believes this evolution is driving the adoption of what it describes as human-led, AI-assisted security testing.

Rather than replacing security professionals, AI is increasingly being used to accelerate analysis, correlate findings across environments, identify attack path relationships, and surface potentially exploitable conditions at scale. Human expertise remains essential for validating exploitability, understanding attacker behaviour, assessing business impact, and translating technical findings into actionable decisions.

"The conversation around AI in cybersecurity often focuses on automation," Peapell continued. "The reality is that effective offensive security still relies heavily on experience, creativity, and contextual understanding. AI can help us process information faster, but understanding how an attacker would chain vulnerabilities together, move through an environment, and exploit weaknesses in practice still requires human judgement."

The company's own experience reinforces the importance of prioritization. Across organizations using The Rootshell Platform, remediation performance improved from 44.56% to 74.62% over an eleven-month period, representing a 67.5% relative increase in resolution rates. According to Rootshell, this demonstrates the value of combining continuous visibility with effective prioritization and remediation ownership rather than relying solely on periodic assessments and static reporting.

As part of this broader evolution, Rootshell continues to expand the capabilities of Velma, its exploit intelligence technology. Originally developed to identify vulnerabilities being actively exploited in the wild, Velma is increasingly supporting finding correlation, attack path analysis, exposure prioritization, and risk contextualization across modern environments.

These AI-assisted enhancements are designed to help security teams identify changing risk conditions faster, reduce manual triage effort, and focus remediation resources where they will have the greatest impact.

Looking ahead, Rootshell also sees increasing demand for security intelligence that can integrate more naturally into operational workflows. As organizations continue exploring AI and large language model initiatives, the company is investigating future MCP server capabilities that could allow prioritized exposure intelligence to be securely consumed within AI-driven decision-making environments.

Tony Allen, Co-Founder of Rootshell Security, believes this reflects a broader industry transition.

"We're seeing increasing demand from organizations that want more than another report or dashboard," said Allen. "They want continuous visibility, exploit-aware prioritization, and confidence that they're focusing resources on the risks that matter most. AI can accelerate the journey, but prioritization remains the key to reducing risk."

For Rootshell, the implications are clear. As AI continues to improve visibility and increase the volume of security intelligence available to organizations, the differentiator will no longer be who can discover the most vulnerabilities. It will be who can understand, prioritize, and act on them most effectively.

About Shaun Peapell ChCSP

Shaun Peapell is VP Global Threat Services at Rootshell Security, where he leads the delivery and evolution of offensive security services, including penetration testing, red teaming, purple teaming, social engineering, and Continuous Testing programs. A highly experienced cybersecurity practitioner, Shaun specializes in helping organizations understand and validate real-world cyber risk through adversary-led testing, exploit intelligence, and continuous security assessment methodologies.

Shaun holds multiple industry-recognized certifications and accreditations, including CREST Registered Simulated Attack Manager (CRTAM) and NCSC CHECK Team Leader, and is a regular contributor to industry discussions on offensive security, threat-led testing, vulnerability prioritization, and the evolving role of AI within cybersecurity.