CISOs believe AI will outpace security teams

AI is set to outpace security teams according to 91 percent of security leaders in a new Bugcrowd report.

AI is clearly seen as a double-edged sword. Despite plans to hire, 70 percent report that they plan to reduce the security team headcount within the next five years due to the adoption of AI technologies. Over 90 percent believe that AI already performs better than security professionals, or at least will in the near future. While 58 percent believe that the risks of AI are worse than its potential benefits.

Among other findings 33 percent believe that at least half of companies are willing to sacrifice their customers' long-term privacy or security to save money. This is explained in part by the fact that 40 percent believe that fewer than one in three companies truly understand their risk of being breached.

Although 87 percent report that they are currently hiring security staff, 56 percent say that their security team is currently understaffed. And despite some common misconceptions around not needing a college degree, respondents reported that only six percent of cybersecurity leaders don't have a degree and over 80 percent have a degree specifically in cybersecurity.

CISOs favor ethical hacking too, due to concerns around the malicious use of AI by attackers 70 percent of security leaders have turned towards using crowdsourced security for testing their AI defenses. In fact, 73 percent of security leaders view ethical hacking in a favorable light and 75 percent of them actually have experience with it themselves.

"The CISO role is evolving. Given the current risk landscape and the need to prioritize security over resilience, the CISO has more responsibility than ever before," says Nick McKenzie, CISO at Bugcrowd. "Bridging the gap between CISOs and the collective ingenuity of hackers is key to shielding organizations from the increasing onslaught of AI threats and attacks."

You can get the full Inside the Mind of a CISO report from the Bugcrowd site.

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