Cybersecurity has always been a moving target. As businesses adopt new technologies, attackers find new ways to exploit them. But artificial intelligence is changing the equation at a much faster pace.
AI is helping companies automate operations, analyse data and improve productivity. At the same time, cybercriminals can use the same technology to create more sophisticated attacks, automate parts of their operations and discover vulnerabilities more quickly.
For businesses, this means cybersecurity can no longer be treated as an IT problem that sits quietly in the background.
It is becoming a core business issue.
Research from the Information Services Group found that organisations increasingly consider AI-related threats among their biggest cybersecurity concerns. Its 2026 research showed that 74% of surveyed enterprises had increased investment in AI-specific tools, while 69% had increased spending on systems designed to monitor and detect AI-related threats.
The numbers reflect a growing contradiction.
Companies are investing heavily in AI because they want the productivity benefits, while simultaneously spending more money to protect themselves from the risks created by AI.
AI is changing the attacker’s toolbox
One of the biggest concerns is the ability to automate activities that previously required significant human effort.
Generative AI can produce convincing emails, social-media messages and other forms of communication. That makes phishing and social engineering potentially more difficult to detect.
An attacker no longer necessarily needs to write a poorly worded message containing obvious mistakes.
AI can help create communications that appear professional, personalised and contextually relevant.
Voice cloning and synthetic video introduce another layer of risk.
Employees have traditionally relied on visual and audio cues when deciding whether a communication is genuine. As those signals become easier to manufacture, businesses will need stronger verification processes.
The World Economic Forum’s 2026 Global Cybersecurity Outlook found that 87% of respondents identified AI-related vulnerabilities as the fastest-growing cyber risk during 2025.
That is a significant warning.
The AI tools inside companies can also become targets
The danger does not only come from criminals using AI.
Businesses themselves can accidentally introduce vulnerabilities by deploying AI systems without understanding how those systems handle information.
An employee might paste confidential documents into an external AI service. Another might connect an AI assistant to company files or email without properly reviewing the permissions.
The problem becomes even more complicated when companies use dozens of different AI tools.
Without proper governance, organisations may not even know exactly which AI systems their employees are using.
That is why AI governance and cybersecurity increasingly need to work together.
AI can also strengthen defence
The story is not entirely negative.
AI can be extremely useful to security teams.
Security departments deal with enormous amounts of information, including network activity, login attempts, system logs and alerts. AI can help identify unusual patterns and prioritise potentially dangerous activity.
The same technology that can help attackers move faster can therefore help defenders respond faster.
ISG’s research found that many organisations are already moving AI systems beyond experimental pilots, with 64% of surveyed enterprises using AI in limited production and another 24% reporting widespread deployment.
The question is therefore no longer whether businesses should use AI.
For many organisations, that decision has already been made.
The question is how safely they can use it.
Security needs to become part of AI adoption
Businesses should know what AI tools are being used, what information those tools can access and which systems they can interact with.
Employees also need training.
Traditional cybersecurity awareness programmes focused heavily on suspicious links, passwords and malware. Those subjects remain important, but modern training increasingly needs to cover AI-generated phishing, deepfakes, data leakage and unsafe AI usage.
Organisations also need clear access controls.
An AI assistant that can read a company’s entire database should not automatically have permission to modify or delete that information.
The principle should be simple: give AI systems only the access they actually need.
Artificial intelligence will probably become one of the most important technologies businesses adopt over the next decade.
But the companies that benefit most from it will not necessarily be those that deploy AI the fastest.
They will be those that understand its capabilities and its risks.
Cybersecurity is no longer about protecting businesses from technology.
Increasingly, it is about protecting businesses while they use technology more aggressively than ever before.
