How will AI impact cybersecurity in the future? 

How will AI impact cybersecurity in the future? 

The emergence of AI and its possibilities has encouraged organizations to consider it for efficient operations. 

However, AI has turned out to be a double-edged sword. While it has provided businesses with the capability to transform their operations and become more efficient, it has also given cybercriminals a horrifying weapon to threaten defenses. 

Let us explore how AI will impact the world of cybersecurity in 2025 and the future. 

What is the future of AI in cybersecurity? 

In a research by Splunk in 2024 titled “State of Security”, it was found that only 43 percent of people considered AI as a benefit whereas 45% believed that adversaries would benefit the most, and 12% thought that AI defense and attackers both will cancel each other out. 

Here are some of the ways through which AI will impact cybersecurity in 2025 and the future: 

How will it impact threats? 

Threat actors will leverage AI to hyper-personalize their phishing campaigns by adjusting the tonality/communication style as per their targets.  

AI will also make it a lot easier for low-skilled threat actors to craft phishing emails that can be challenging for security mechanisms to deter.  

They will use AI bots to collect publicly available information about their targets from social media. Through the weaponization of AI, cybercriminals will be able to create more harmful malware and enhance the persistence in their target’s environment while remaining undetectable for longer periods of time.  

How will it impact defenders? 

With AI, cybersecurity teams will be able to analyze threats better, predict suspicious patterns, and identify vulnerabilities faster.  

It will help them significantly reduce the time to detect and respond to threats, especially with a limited team.  

Organizations will shift security left and automate security tasks for more efficient operations, allowing them to gain increased focus on attending critical security alerts.  

They can automate incident response functions like quarantining malware, threat detection, response, and containment.  Increased organizations will consider the platformization of security that will have AI working at its core, offering them the visibility and control they need to keep their cybersecurity posture in check.  

To be prepared against AI-based social engineering threats, organizations will keep cybersecurity awareness central to their culture, increasing initiatives for training, raising awareness, and addressing the risks of human error.  

How can generative AI be used in cybersecurity? & What are the benefits of using AI in cybersecurity? 

AI offers immense capabilities to cybersecurity, from threat detection to response based on thorough analysis of behaviors and patterns.  

Through multiple applications, it could benefit an organization to keep its most precious assets and infrastructure secure. The following are some of the ways by which AI can help cybersecurity. 

AI can help organizations analyze 

AI can enable organizations to analyze big sets of data, make sense of the security data that might be missed due to human error, predict the occurrence of threats, and learn threat patterns to prevent and avert cyber threats. It can also be used to identify vulnerabilities  and understand their severity and impact on the organization. 

Enhance threat detection and response capabilities 

Through AI, cybersecurity teams can reduce the overall time to detect cyber threats with automated AI-based threat scanning. It can preemptively alert security experts to take prompt action on suspicious behaviors and activity before it escalates to a serious cyber threat like a data breach. It can automatically respond to suspicious activities, allowing security teams to focus on critical cybersecurity events that demand attention. 

Automate incident response  

AI can assist organizations in automating incident response functions like threat detection, isolation, quarantine, containment, and recovery for quick action before a threat becomes too severe to handle. It will help incident responders by automating response tasks like acting on suspicious user activity, blocking malicious traffic, and analyzing emails for possibilities of phishing.