New Report Highlights Huge Impact of AI on Cybersecurity Industry

A new report from Techopedia highlights the shocking impact of AI on the cybersecurity industry, with the AI cybersecurity market estimated to hit a value of $133 billion by 2030. Detailing how the use of AI is seen as both a positive and a negative by businesses and professionals alike, it gives a glance into the future of cybersecurity.

On the positive side, AI-enhanced security systems can rapidly analyze large amounts of data to detect threats at speeds that human analysts simply can’t manage. Last year, more than 530 signals of potential cyberattacks were logged every second.

This scale - now possible with the use of AI - can only be dealt with by professionals using AI systems and processes that are able to keep up. 69% of surveyed businesses echoed this sentiment, stating that AI will be a cybersecurity need in 2024 and beyond.

This is obvious when looking at the figures for businesses with AI-enabled security systems against those who don’t use them. Those that use AI within cybersecurity saw data breaches contained within 100 days less than those without, and at an average cost of $1.8 million less.

A huge difference! AI systems are also great at future-proofing organizations. By creating threat simulations through available data, they can assess vulnerabilities as well as predict the types of attacks that could occur.

However, hackers are also using AI to find more innovative ways to get around this, mainly through more advanced phishing to trick people. AI-generated deepfake phishing - growing by 3000% in 2023 - is more personalized to their targets, making them even harder to detect. Over a third of cybersecurity professionals (37%) stated that these attacks were a major concern.

This has already become a reality. A recent, notable case saw a finance professional handing over $25 million to fraudsters who generated and posed as the company’s Chief Financial Officer and team on a video call.

Cybersecurity professionals are clear in citing AI as the issue - 75% blame the technology for the huge rise in cybercrime, estimated to hit $10.5 trillion by 2025. And they’re not alone in thinking this. In the Techopedia report, four of five AI language model systems cited AI-powered attacks as a key cybersecurity threat to internet users in 2024. An eerie moment of self-reflection?

An ongoing race of rapid innovation, it’s clear that AI has and will continue to change cybersecurity as we know it - for good and bad alike.

For more information, see the Techopedia AI Cybersecurity Insights infographic below: