3 ways AI will transform security in 2025

Automated threat detection and prevention, advanced intelligence, and AI-driven supply chain attacks — the AI we see in the world today has evolved significantly beyond the days of basic pattern matching. Whereas 10 years ago, machine learning could singularly translate variable inputs into a fixed output, now, it can not only take in variable inputs but also produce variable outputs.  

This expansion of intelligence is why we can have human-like conversations with AI bots today. It’s also why we can get a phone call from our bank asking us to reset a password, unable to discern if it’s a real employee or an imposter. While AI promises a bevy of new opportunities for efficiency and productivity, it also brings with it great uncertainty and unknown risks. Here are 3 ways that we can expect AI to transform security in the year ahead.  

Weaponized AI will be the biggest security concern in 2025

Earlier this year, it was found that 74 percent of business leaders are worried about AI’s impact on data privacy, and 71 percent cited security risks as their top AI-related concern. While we’re still learning about the exact kind of risks and threats AI can pose to businesses, we can assume bad actors will increasingly lean into the advanced technology to impersonate individuals, gain access to organizations, and exploit employees via more targeted attacks to drive revenue. 

IT teams especially, and employees who can easily access sensitive business information, will be hit hardest by these targeted attacks before AI awareness and more stringent safeguards firm up. Plus, large-scale organizations in legacy industries — like transportation, energy production, etc. — will have the largest bullseyes on their backs as bad actors exploit their (often) outdated IT and security systems. In 2025, IT teams will be challenged with balancing ongoing modernization efforts needed to drive business revenue with securing their organization (and a distributed workforce) against an even larger and more ruthless attack surface.  

Advanced automation will transform IT and security teams

AI capabilities and advanced automation will streamline manual tasks and security efficacy in a way we haven’t seen before. Specifically, AI will advance IT and security operations in many ways, including: 

• Providing more informed recommendations to accelerate efficiency: Especially for arduous, time-consuming tasks (like patching), AI will be able to assist IT teams in providing comprehensive sentiment analyses of patches before they’re issued at scale. This will lead to more robust and informed recommendations, so security professionals can rest assured they’re issuing patches and securing devices without inviting additional risks. 
• Enhance existing security defenses and technologies to optimize resilience: AI algorithms will be able to assist security teams in more quickly analyzing, identifying, and mitigating potential threats in real time (via enhanced capabilities like real-time threat detection and automated incident response), automatically curbing threats before they can cause harm to the business or impact critical operations. 
• Strengthen cyber best practices to fuel compliance efforts: AI has the potential to help security teams further strengthen and improve patch compliance by regularly scanning systems for vulnerabilities, offering recommendations on which remediations to prioritize first (based on system priorities), and even predict which systems are most likely to be targeted by bad actors and recommend proactive patching strategies (via capabilities like predictive patching). 

Not only will capabilities like these streamline processes like patch and vulnerability management, but they can help businesses stay secure while remaining productive as the threat landscape evolves. 

Prepare for future compliance measures by bolstering security today  

Lastly, 2025 will bring with it more stringent data protection and compliance requirements from around the world to address AI and other privacy concerns. In the EU, NIS2 is now law, meaning that there’s a whole new set of cybersecurity and privacy requirements that all entities that do business in healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, and others must comply with. And in the United States, NIST 2, which accounts for similar structures and policies, is a firm best practice.  

As AI regulation becomes a bigger part of the conversation, and the federal government develops and implements more guardrails around the technology and how it’s used, organizations should start with the basics right now — i.e. secure, track, and report on where and how they’re storing data. Adopting best practices sooner rather than later will better position organizations to address compliance standards and best serve their customers.  

Arming people with the resources needed to successfully navigate this new era

While the AI era unfolds, one of our biggest challenges and strengths will be our people. Human error and uncertainty may initially beget heightened AI risks, but it’s also the oversight of AI — the human and algorithmic partnership — that will help us safely innovate with and explore the technology. AI itself is intended to be a good thing: Unlocking value and improving efficiency.  

But ultimately, AI cannot be left unchecked. The best way for organizations to rein in AI risks is with more education and employee training. People have to know what to look out for, and more broadly, you can’t do enough cyber awareness training. Even beyond AI, there are a ton of ways to compromise an individual system or information, and the digital world around us is constantly changing.  

The more that we can educate employees and strengthen security across the board, the better prepared organizations (and their IT and security teams) will be to stay compliant, resilient, and scale sustainably in this new era.