Cybersecurity in the age of AI

AI has lowered the cost of two attacker activities that used to be expensive: reconnaissance and personalised social engineering. That is a structural change, not a passing trend.

Programmes calibrated to the previous cost-curve are now under-provisioned in two places: identity and human-layer defences. Both need attention this year.

The good news: defenders benefit even more, if they invest. Detection quality, triage speed and analyst reach can all step-change with well-scoped AI in the SOC.

We recommend a 12-month plan built around three anchors: identity hardening, phishing-resistant MFA, and an evaluated AI-assisted triage pipeline in the SOC.