100,000+ New Vulnerabilities This Year And Most Will Be Zero-Days Exploited Faster
KnowBe4, March 24,2026
The number of publicly reported unique vulnerabilities has risen year after year. There was a brief decrease and stabilization in 2015 - 2016, but those are the only years in the over two decades (1999 - on) I have been following vulnerability metrics. Other than that, it has been up, up, up.
Article Summary
- AI will create more vulnerabilities and more zero-day vulnerabilities
- Zero-days are the majority of vulnerabilities found these days
- Good patch management is more important than ever
Last year, the number of unique publicly announced vulnerabilities (CVEs) was over 48,000. It is on pace to be over 57,000 this year so far. But I think the final end-of-the-year figure will be over 100,000, mostly zero days, and faster.
Why?