AI seen as biggest cyber disruptor of 2025
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Two-thirds of organizations believe AI and machine learning technologies, including generative AI, will have the biggest impact on cybersecurity in 2025, according to the World Economic Forum's annual global cyber outlook.
Why it matters: Expect companies' IT budgets to align with these concerns.
- That means more money going toward buying AI-enabled cyber defense and building new products to fight AI-enabled cyber threats.
Driving the news: Heads of states and CEOs are gathering at the World Economic Forum this week in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss the globe's top economic issues.
- The forum released its annual global cyber outlook last week ahead of the days-long gathering.
By the numbers: 66% of organizations said in a survey last fall among 321 participants around the world that AI and machine learning will have the most significant impact on their cybersecurity strategies this year.
- 47% of respondents said their main concern is generative AI helping hackers get better at targeting their companies.
- 42% of organizations reported an uptick in phishing and social engineering attacks last year. Experts have warned that chatbots will speed up attackers' ability to launch these attacks.
The big picture: More than two years after the public release of ChatGPT, companies are slowly starting to let their employees make use of AI tools in their day-to-day jobs.
- But that also means that security teams need to find ways to secure these new applications, which bring new risks like data leakage.
Yes, but: 63% of organizations said they do not have any processes in place to assess the security of AI tools before deploying them.
The intrigue: CEOs and their top security leaders have diverging views on which geopolitical cyber risks are most concerning.
- 45% of chief information security officers said they're most concerned about cyberattacks that disrupt their companies' operations — compared with 31% of CEOs who said the same.
- 33% of CEOs are concerned about cyber espionage and loss of sensitive information, compared with 27% of CISOs.
