A major global survey of over 16,000 cybersecurity professionals has produced a beautifully contradictory result: AI was voted both the technology most likely to help secure organizations AND the one most likely to threaten them. It's the same technology, doing both things at once — and somehow, nobody's surprised.
On the threat side, 52% of respondents flagged AI as one of the most damaging developments in cybersecurity today. The biggest worry isn't rogue robots — it's social engineering. Cybercriminals are leveraging AI to craft eerily convincing phishing messages and high-fidelity deepfakes that are genuinely hard to detect. Respondents tended to rate AI's impact on cybersecurity more positively or negatively, depending on AI's broader impact on their industry in general. Workers in consulting — a field already ransacked by automation — were the most pessimistic, while those in construction or agriculture were far less alarmed.
On the flip side, 41% of professionals see AI as one of the greatest boons the industry has ever had. Automation of repetitive, low-value tasks is the big win here. As ISC2's CISO Jon France puts it: "If it frees up some of my time from analysis, into decision-making and into higher functions, then I'm not losing a job — I'm just focusing on something that's of higher value to me and my organization."
Perhaps most surprisingly, two-thirds of respondents believe AI will actually generate more jobs in cybersecurity, not fewer. Soft skills — communication, critical thinking, teamwork — are becoming more differentiating in the job market as AI handles the grunt work. When asked whether AI's net impact is positive or negative, ISC2's France gave the perfect answer: "Yes."
