The response to the recent PHP security scare may offer an early look at how organizations will handle vulnerabilities discovered and exploited at AI-era speeds, according to Wiz CTO Tomer Schwartz.
In a TechCrunch Equity podcast interview, Schwartz discussed the effort to address two critical flaws in PHP, the open-source language used behind roughly 70% of websites, according to TechCrunch. Some organizations reportedly took sites offline while they worked to patch their systems.
Schwartz was involved in the response alongside OpenAI, research group Calif and the PHP team. The episode focuses on how that coordinated effort unfolded, as well as the challenges startups face when building security into products from the beginning.
Why patching speed is becoming a bigger concern
Researchers who found the PHP bugs told TechCrunch that the incident could be a preview of a broader problem: AI may make it faster to uncover and exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities. That would compress the time defenders have to assess, patch and monitor affected systems.
Schwartz argued that organizations cannot rely indefinitely on developers fixing vulnerabilities by hand. For early-stage companies in particular, the discussion underscores the importance of treating application security as part of the development process rather than as a response after deployment.
The interview does not establish how often AI will uncover or exploit new flaws, but it frames the PHP incident as a case study in the operational pressure that increasingly rapid vulnerability research could create.