A new survey from Sophos found that 89% of IT leaders are concerned that flaws in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) cybersecurity tools could put their organisation at risk. Moreover, 87% reported concern about a resulting lack of cybersecurity accountability.
The study “Beyond the Hype: The Businesses Reality of AI for Cybersecurity” also revealed that 65% had adopted GenAI capabilities, with 98% embedding some form of AI in the cybersecurity infrastructure. IT leaders expressed concern about potential over-reliance on AI.
“As with many other things in life, the mantra should be ‘trust but verify’ regarding generative AI tools. We have not taught the machines to think; we have simply provided them with the context to speed up processing large quantities of data,” said Chester Wisniewski, director, global field CTO, Sophos. “The potential of these tools to accelerate security workloads is amazing, but it still requires the context and comprehension of their human overseers for this benefit to be realised.”
GenAI tools
The study on 400 IT leaders found that organisations of different sizes expressed different priorities for utilising GenAI. Large organisations (those with over 1,000 employees) prioritise improved protection, while respondents with 50-99 rated reducing burnout as their top desired benefit from GenAI tools.
Most respondents (84%) were concerned about pressure to reduce cybersecurity professional headcount due to unrealistic expectations about AI’s abilities to replace human operators.
