In 2021, the average time it took a cybercriminal to move from initial access to lateral movement across your network — what the industry calls "breakout time" — was 98 minutes. That was four years ago. According to the CrowdStrike 2026 Global Threat Report, that number has collapsed to 29 minutes. That's a 70% reduction in four years. The fastest recorded breakout in 2025 was 27 seconds. In one documented intrusion, data exfiltration began within four minutes of initial acce