Defenders Need More Time to Patch with the Influx of Patching Hitting Operations
Cisco, Wednesday, October 28th, 2026
Cisco pitches Live Protect and Snort-based virtual patching on Secure Firewall to reduce exposure while critical patches are applied.
The post says AI-driven vulnerability discovery is producing a flood of patches, citing Microsoft's October 13 release of 1,411 patches, and that organizations still take up to 43 days to patch.
Cisco describes virtual patching as a network-layer shield in which Talos writes Snort rules for exploit traffic and Secure Firewall inspects, logs or drops matches without touching the vulnerable host.
Secure Workload can inventory running workloads and enable only relevant signatures.
It covers third-party software and OT and can arrive before a vendor patch, but only sees traffic crossing the firewall and a novel variant may slip past.