UpTrajectory Review

Lance Eliot's Forbes piece reports that artificial intelligence now scans websites for security flaws and finds critical vulnerabilities in roughly seven out of ten of them. The same tools that defenders use to patch holes, attackers use to find and exploit them first. Eliot frames this as an arms race where speed decides who wins. The piece sits on a thin excerpt, but the claim tracks with what security researchers have warned about for two years: AI-driven vulnerability discovery has moved from lab demo to standard practice on both sides.

For a small-business operator running a company website, an e-commerce storefront, or a customer portal, this changes the math on security. You no longer face only human attackers working through a checklist. You face automated systems that probe your site continuously and report weaknesses in minutes. The 70% figure, if accurate, means most business sites carry at least one critical flaw right now. That includes sites built on WordPress, Shopify, or custom code, and sites maintained by a part-time contractor who last touched the codebase two years ago.

We treat the 70% number with caution. Eliot cites an AI Insider analysis, but the excerpt gives no methodology, no sample size, and no definition of critical. Security vendors have a habit of inflating threat counts to sell services. Still, the directional claim holds: AI lowers the cost of finding vulnerabilities by an order of magnitude, and attackers have adopted it as fast as defenders. The genuinely new point in Eliot's piece is the symmetry. Past security cycles gave defenders a temporary edge when a new tool appeared. That edge has vanished.

The second-order effects split by business size. Large companies can afford AI-driven security scanning, dedicated response teams, and bug-bounty programs. Small businesses get the same exposure without the same budget. Insurance carriers have noticed. Cyber-insurance underwriters now ask about vulnerability-scanning cadence and patch timelines, and a known unpatched flaw can void a claim. Regulators have noticed too. A business that knew about a critical flaw and failed to fix it faces harsher penalties after a breach than one that never knew.

What to watch: whether the 70% figure holds up under scrutiny, and whether any major breach in the next six months traces back to an AI-discovered, AI-exploited flaw. What to do this week: run a vulnerability scan on your own site. Free and paid tools both exist; pick one and act on the top findings. Patch your content-management system, plugins, and themes. Turn on automatic updates where you can. If you store customer data, ask your hosting provider or IT contractor for a written patch policy. Speed now beats perfection.

The arms-race framing also carries a strategic warning. Businesses that treat security as a one-time project, something handled at launch and forgotten, will lose. The operators who treat security as a recurring operational task, with scans on a schedule and patches within days, will stay ahead of most automated attacks. The cost of that discipline has fallen. The cost of ignoring it has not.

“An AI Insider analysis and scoop.” — Forbes Business

Takeaway: Run a vulnerability scan on your business website this week, patch what it finds, and put scanning on a recurring schedule.