It takes a hacker 48 hours to exploit a vulnerability. Why does it take 43 days to patch it?

It is not always possible to patch vulnerabilities as quickly as hackers exploit them, but recent figures show just how much this gap has widened. FortiGuard Labs estimates that the time between the disclosure of a critical vulnerability and its active exploitation has dropped sharply to between 24 and 48 hours. By contrast, Verizon’s 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report shows that organizations take a median of 43 days to complete vulnerability remediation.