Adopting AI is a major priority for businesses - but employees are falling behind on education

• Nearly all security professionals agree automation reduces response times
• Only around half are currently using AI in key cybersecurity workflows
• Many organizations have now experienced deepfake phishing attacks

Most (91%) UK security teams now agree that while adopting the next generation of agentic AI is a priority, many companies are still struggling with uniform AI adoption due to the same old challenges.

For years, now, AI adoption has been held back by a skills shortages and poor policy enforcement, and new research from Ivanti shows those barriers are yet to be broken down.

In fact, a shortage of skills was cited as the number one barrier for AI in cybersecurity as attacks continue to rise.

AI's role in cybersecurity is a mixed one

On one front, cybersecurity teams agree that artificial intelligence improves how they respond to attacks. Most (93%) say that automation reduces response times, and security professionals are more likely to believe that defenders use AI as effectively as attackers.

However actual deployment tells a different story – barely more than half (56%) use AI for cloud security policy enforcement, and even less use it in incident response workflows (47%), threat intelligence correlation (45%) and vulnerability response and remediation (45%).

On the flip side, attackers have also gained access to AI's power to democratize attack sophistication. Three in four (76%) UK organizations have faced deepfake attacks, and half have experienced personalized deepfake phishing.

When it comes to skill sets, it's not just blue-collar workers that are lacking. Just one-third (32%) believe their CEO could reliability identify a deepfake, highlighting the need for a much more comprehensive upskilling effort.

Ivanti Chief Security Officer Daniel Spicer described the "year-over-year widening imbalance in an organizations’ ability to defend their data, people and networks against the evolving threat landscape" as a Cybersecurity Readiness Deficit.

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