78 percent of CISOs say AI-powered threats have a significant impact

New research from Darktrace finds that 78 percent of CISOs say that AI-powered threats are having a significant impact on their organizations, a five percent increase from 2024.

There's more confidence about dealing with them though, more than 60 percent now say that they are adequately prepared to defend against these threats, an increase of nearly 15 percent year-on-year.

Additionally, 95 percent of all cybersecurity professionals surveyed believe AI can improve the speed and efficiency of their ability to prevent, detect, respond and recover from threats.

"The impact of AI on cybersecurity is clear and increasing. There are more employees and enterprise applications using AI that must be protected. Adversaries are using it to make their attacks more targeted, scalable, and successful. All of this is unfolding in a highly volatile geopolitical environment that is creating more uncertainty," says Jill Popelka, CEO, Darktrace. "There has never been a more urgent need for AI in the SOC to augment teams and pre-empt threats so organizations can build their cyber resilience. That's why Darktrace continues to invest in new innovations to help customers manage risk and thrive in this new era of AI threats."

Lack of personnel to manage tools and alerts is seen as the greatest inhibitor to defending against AI-powered threats, only 11 percent report that they plan to increase cybersecurity staff in 2025, down from last year. AI is seen by this group as essential to augment human team members, with 64 percent reporting that they plan to add AI-powered solutions to their security stack in the next year and 88 percent reporting that the use of AI is critical to free up time for security teams to become more proactive.

When asked to look ahead at the future impact of AI in cyber defense, cloud security (66 percent) and network security (55 percent) are identified as two domains where cybersecurity professionals expect defensive AI to have the biggest impact.

The full report is available from the Darktrace site.