…Says 94% Of Cyber Leaders Identify AI As Defining Force In Cybersecurity
…Calls On Business, Government Leaders To Treat AI As Foundational Security Capability, Investing On Technology, Skills
A report by World Economic Forum has stated that Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping cyber security and is the biggest driver of change in the field.
The report stated that some 94 per cent of cyber leaders identify AI as a defining force and that 77 per cent of organisations already use it in their cyber operations.
The AI and Cyber: Empowering Defenders report, developed in collaboration with KPMG, highlights measurable gains in cost reduction, response speed and resilience.
The report said that while threat actors increasingly weaponise AI to automate deception, generate malware and scale attacks at machine speed.
The report indicates that organisations deploying AI strategically are achieving significant advantages.
Organisations that extensively leverage on AI in security reduce average breach costs by up to $1.9 million and shorten breach lifecycles by approximately 80 days.
According to the Head of the Centre for Cybersecurity, World Economic Forum, Akshay Joshi, “AI has the potential to shift the balance towards defenders
“Organisations that treat it as a strategic capability, rather than a standalone tool, will be better placed to turn growing cyber risk into resilience and competitive advantage,” Joshi added.
Building on the Forum’s 2025 publication, Artificial Intelligence and Cyber security: Balancing Risks and Rewards, the 2026 edition focuses on how organisations are deploying AI for defence in practice.
As enterprise attack surfaces expand to include hundreds of thousands of internet-facing assets, the scale and complexity of cyber risk are increasing significantly.
Among the examples featured, KPMG reports a 25 per cent increase in operational efficiency in threat intelligence, accenture cut security analysis time in more than 100,000 internet-facing sites from 15 minutes to under one minute, and IBM’s ATOM platform helps scale global 24×7 threat detection and response, automating more than 850 analyst hours a month and cutting end-to-end investigation time by 37 per cent.
Speaking, the Partner, Global Head of Cyber & Tech Risk, KPMG, Laurent Gobbi said,
“Attackers are moving faster and at greater scale than ever before. This report is a call to action for organisations to match that pace, with AI as a force multiplier for cyber defence.”
The report emphasises that AI’s value in cybersecurity lies in augmenting human expertise, accelerating decisions and strengthening resilience, rather than automation alone.
The report highlights that its impact depends on clear AI deployment strategy, rigorously tested use cases before scaling, and strong governance and human oversight from the outset.
The report draws on 20 real-world case studies and insights from one-on-one interviews and workshops conducted under the World Economic Forum’s Cyber Frontiers: AI & Cyber initiative, convening 105 representatives from 84 organisations across 15 industries.
As cyber risks become more complex, the report calls on business and government leaders to treat AI as a foundational security capability, investing not only in technology but also in the skills, processes and governance required to defend at machine speed.
About Cyber Frontiers: AI & Cyber
The Cyber Frontiers: AI & Cyber initiative, launched in 2024, brings together a global multi-stakeholder community to explore how AI is reshaping cybersecurity through a knowledge-sharing platform.
The initiative equips organizations with insights to harness AI technologies to strengthen their cybersecurity capabilities along with guidance for building strong guardrails.
The initiative aims to develop approaches to enable secure and scalable adoption of agentic AI to ensure a secure agentic economy.
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