Artificial Intelligence Emerging as a Key Competitive Advantage in Cybersecurity, New Report Finds

A new report has found that artificial intelligence is becoming the most influential force shaping the future of cybersecurity, with 94% of cyber leaders identifying AI as a defining factor in the sector and 77% of organisations already integrating it into their cyber operations.

The findings reveal that AI is accelerating both cyber threats and cyber defences, creating an increasingly fast-moving battle between organisations and cyber criminals. At the same time, the use of AI in cybersecurity is progressing beyond experimental pilots into widespread operational deployment, delivering measurable improvements in areas such as threat detection and vulnerability management.

Further details about the report are available here.

Produced in partnership with KPMG, the report, AI and Cyber: Empowering Defenders, outlines significant benefits linked to AI adoption, including lower costs, faster incident response times and improved organisational resilience. While cyber criminals are increasingly using AI to automate deception, develop malware and conduct attacks at scale, the report concludes that organisations adopting AI strategically are gaining a substantial defensive advantage. Businesses making extensive use of AI within their security operations are reducing average breach costs by as much as $1.9 million and shortening breach lifecycles by around 80 days.

Akshay Joshi, Head of the Centre for Cybersecurity at the World Economic Forum, said AI has the potential to tip the balance in favour of defenders. He added that organisations treating AI as a core strategic capability, rather than simply another tool, would be in a stronger position to convert rising cyber risks into resilience and long-term competitive advantage.

The report builds on the Forum’s 2025 publication, Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity: Balancing Risks and Rewards, by focusing on how organisations are now applying AI in practical defence scenarios. As businesses manage growing numbers of internet-facing assets, often numbering in the hundreds of thousands, the scale and complexity of cyber risk continue to rise sharply.

Among the examples cited in the report, KPMG recorded a 25% improvement in operational efficiency within threat intelligence functions. Accenture reduced security analysis times across more than 100,000 internet-facing sites from 15 minutes to less than one minute. IBM’s ATOM platform has also enabled continuous global threat detection and response capabilities, automating more than 850 analyst hours every month while reducing end-to-end investigation times by 37%.

Laurent Gobbi, Partner and Global Head of Cyber & Tech Risk at KPMG, said attackers are now operating at unprecedented speed and scale. He described the report as a call to action for organisations to keep pace by using AI as a force multiplier for cyber defence.

The report stresses that the real value of AI in cybersecurity lies not simply in automation but in strengthening human expertise, accelerating decision-making and improving resilience. It also highlights the importance of establishing a clear deployment strategy, rigorously testing AI use cases before scaling them, and maintaining strong governance and human oversight from the beginning.

The findings are based on 20 real-world case studies, alongside interviews and workshops carried out through the World Economic Forum’s Cyber Frontiers: AI & Cyber initiative. The initiative brought together 105 representatives from 84 organisations operating across 15 industries.

As cyber threats continue to evolve in complexity, the report urges both business and government leaders to view AI as a foundational cybersecurity capability. It recommends investment not only in technology but also in the skills, operational processes and governance structures required to defend organisations at machine speed.

About Cyber Frontiers: AI & Cyber

Launched in 2024, the Cyber Frontiers: AI & Cyber initiative brings together a global multi-stakeholder community to examine the impact of artificial intelligence on cybersecurity through a collaborative knowledge-sharing platform. The initiative supports organisations with practical insights into using AI technologies to strengthen cybersecurity capabilities, while also providing guidance on effective safeguards and governance. Its long-term objective is to support the secure and scalable adoption of agentic AI and help establish a secure agentic economy.