World Economic Forum says cyber attackers now deploy AI to increase the speed, scale and sophistication of attacks.
- +WEF Warns Cyber Attackers Are Using AI To Intensify Digital Threats
A new report has established that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the cybersecurity landscape, with attackers increasingly resorting to its use to increase the speed, scale and sophistication of cyber threats.
A new report has established that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the cybersecurity landscape, with attackers increasingly resorting to its use to increase the speed, scale and sophistication of cyber threats.
This is contained in a just-published white paper by the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Cyber Frontiers initiative in collaboration with KPMG.
The report themed, “Empowering Defenders: AI for Cybersecurity,” advised security teams to combine AI with human judgement, simulate AI failures and design fail-safes that keep security operations functional during AI outages.
It cautioned that heavy reliance on AI can undermine cyber resilience, adding that excessive trust in automated decisions creates a false sense of security and over time, erodes the expertise needed to intervene when systems fail.
The report underscored the reality that rising complexity, volume and speed of cyberthreats is outpacing traditional defences, requiring new approaches to protect interconnected systems.
It said, “AI has emerged as both a technical and strategic capability to address these challenges, enabling organisations to strengthen defensive operations and meet regulatory demands.
“Several factors underscore why AI has become essential for modern cyber defence. Attackers need only find one entry point while defenders must defend everything.
“With AI, attackers can identify vulnerabilities faster. Defenders, however, can use AI to analyse and prioritise risks using internal proprietary data for contextual precision that attackers lack, thereby regaining strategic advantage.
“Modern digital ecosystems are highly interconnected, creating large attack surfaces and hidden vulnerabilities.
“Manual analysis is no longer sufficient. AI can operationalise and correlate data in real time, identifying configuration weaknesses and vulnerabilities at a scale and speed beyond human capability.”
The report established the fact that AI is reshaping the cybersecurity landscape, with attackers increasingly using it to increase the speed, scale and sophistication of threats.
To address these evolving risks, it observed that cybersecurity must keep pace with the growing speed and sophistication of modern attacks.
“AI-driven tools are becoming central across the cybersecurity life cycle, from detecting and preventing incidents to response and recovery, enabling organisations to secure their digital assets and sensitive information more effectively,” it said.
The report focused on the use of AI by defenders, thereby providing actionable guidance to organisations on how to deploy it to enhance defensive capabilities.
It prescribed a number of measures executive and cyber leaders embarking on AI adoption journey for cyber defence must embrace.
These include aligning the adoption of AI in cybersecurity with organisational strategic priorities, as well as establishing organisationalreadiness across processes, data, infrastructure, skills and governance before deploying AI in cybersecurity.
Also critical is to validate AI solutions through structured pilots prior to full deployment, scale and monitor the performance of AI in cybersecurity and optimise as needed.
The report said, “With the right approach in place, organisations can harness AI technologies to strengthen defences today, while building the agility to keep pace with evolving cyberthreats.”
