AI Proving Grounds Consortium Highlights Urgency for Preemptive Security as AI Accelerates Cyberattacks

Security leaders emphasize the need to identify weaknesses and validate defenses before adversaries exploit them.

Key highlights:

• At a September 24 AI Proving Grounds Consortium (AIPGC) event, Gartner® VP Analyst Tom Powledge and cybersecurity leaders from SimSpace, Corelight, and Dreadnode discussed why AI-driven attacks are accelerating the shift toward preemptive security.
• As AI compresses the time available to detect and respond to attacks, organizations need to identify likely attack paths and validate defenses before adversaries exploit them.
• Realistic cyber simulations and continuous validation can help organizations test security controls while proving the resilience of critical business operations.

ORLANDO, Fla., Nov. 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- At a September 24 event, Build Trust in AI: Govern, Measure and Operationalize AI at Scale, hosted by the AI Proving Grounds Consortium (AIPGC), Gartner VP Analyst Tom Powledge joined leaders from Corelight, Dreadnode and SimSpace to discuss why AI-driven attacks require a shift toward preemptive security. The AIPGC brings together cybersecurity leaders to help organizations safely train, test and validate AI defenses before deploying them in production.

The discussion explored how AI is accelerating cyberattacks and shrinking defenders' response time, increasing the importance of realistic attack simulations and continuous security validation to find weaknesses before attackers exploit them.

"This is real. We are starting to see these attacks," Powledge said.

As AI accelerates vulnerability discovery and adversary operations, Powledge said organizations need to "move to a more proactive, more preemptive, more structured program" and increasingly use approaches including continuous threat exposure management, adversarial validation and simulation. "We want to be acting before an attack occurs," he said.

When the response window approaches zero
The challenge becomes more urgent as the time between compromise and impact continues to shrink.

Jason Rivera, Global Field CISO and Chief Evangelist at SimSpace, pointed to the dramatic decline in attacker breakout time, the period between initial access and lateral movement, and asked what happens as that window approaches zero. "That's where this idea of the preemptive security era comes from," Rivera said.

Instead of waiting for an adversary to attack production systems, defenders can use realistic simulations of their own environments to discover likely attack paths, test defenses and develop protections before those attacks occur.

The goal is to reclaim the first-mover advantage. "What if you could actually preempt the adversary by doing whatever attacks against yourself first before they did it?" Rivera said.

Assume breach. Preempt the attack. Prove resilience.
Preemptive security does not assume you can stop every attack. It assumes determined adversaries may eventually gain access and asks whether the organization has already proven that its most important systems, people, security controls and AI agents can withstand what happens next. That changes the ultimate measure of cyber readiness.

It is not only: How quickly can we respond? It is: Can our most critical business and mission functions remain resilient when we are breached or degraded?

Continuous security testing remains far from universal. According to SimSpace's 2026 State of Agentic Cybersecurity report, only 29% of surveyed organizations conduct continuous cyber simulations, leaving many organizations with limited opportunities to validate their defenses against current threats.

AI Proving Grounds provide a realistic environment where organizations can safely attack representations of their own infrastructure, expose weaknesses, validate AI agents and security controls, train human operators and continuously improve defenses without risking production systems.

Organizations can use that environment to:

• Find attack paths before adversaries exploit them.
• Validate whether AI agents, security controls and human operators perform as expected.
• Prioritize weaknesses based on business and mission impact.
• Generate new defensive capabilities from realistic attack simulations.
• Continuously prove that critical systems can remain resilient as threats and environments change.

As both attackers and defenders begin operating at machine speed, the security advantage may increasingly belong to organizations that can experience the next attack before it happens for real.

The discussion reinforced the AIPGC's focus on helping organizations evaluate AI-driven security capabilities under realistic conditions and establish greater confidence in their ability to withstand emerging threats.

Watch the AIPGC discussion
The full Build Trust in AI: Govern, Measure and Operationalize AI at Scale event is available on demand, including Tom Powledge VP Analyst of Gartner, Greg Bell of Corelight, Brad Palm of Dreadnode and Jason Rivera of SimSpace. https://aipgc.ai/aipgc-events/ 

Organizations looking to apply these principles can also explore how AI Proving Grounds enable teams to build, validate and operationalize AI defenses under realistic adversarial conditions. https://simspace.com/ai-proving-grounds/

Frequently Asked Questions

What is preemptive cybersecurity?
Preemptive cybersecurity is an approach that moves security activity earlier in the attack lifecycle. Rather than relying only on detecting and responding after an adversary acts, organizations use simulation, exposure validation, threat intelligence and continuous testing to identify likely attack paths and strengthen defenses before those attacks reach production.

Why is AI changing cybersecurity response time?
AI can increase the speed, scale, sophistication and stamina of cyberattacks. As the time between initial access and lateral movement shrinks, defenders may have less time to investigate and respond manually. This makes preemptive testing and automated defense increasingly important.

What is an AI Proving Grounds?
An AI Proving Grounds is a realistic environment where organizations can safely build, train, test, validate and operationalize AI agents, security technologies and human workflows under adversarial conditions before relying on them in production. It allows organizations to simulate attacks against a realistic representation of their own environment, identify exploitable attack paths, test security controls and AI agents, generate new defenses and continuously retest as threats and systems change.

Does preemptive security replace incident response?
No. Detection, threat hunting and incident response remain essential. Preemptive security adds an earlier layer by helping organizations discover and prepare for attack paths before adversaries use them.

About the AI Proving Grounds Consortium
The AI Proving Grounds Consortium brings together cybersecurity leaders to help organizations safely train, test and prove AI defenses before production deployment.
Founding members include Corelight, Dropzone AI, SCYTHE, SimSpace and Sondera.
Learn more at AIPGC.ai.

Media Contact
Amy Rice
PR for SimSpace
[email protected]

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SOURCE SimSpace Corporation