Cybersecurity: Threats Outpace Defenses & AI Escalates the Challenge

According to a recent Accenture report, cyber threats are evolving faster than companies can adapt their defenses to them, and the rapid adoption of AI tools is escalating the challenges businesses face.  The report surveyed nearly 2,300 CISOs and CIOs from $1 billion-plus enterprises across 24 industries and 17 countries.  The results are sobering. Here’s an excerpt from the report’s executive summary:

Our research reveals that 77% of organizations lack the foundational data and AI security practices needed to safeguard critical models, data pipelines and cloud infrastructure. These are not just vulnerabilities—they are systemic blind spots that leave enterprises fundamentally unprepared to defend against modern, AI-driven threats.

While AI adoption races ahead, security is playing catch-up. Speed and innovation continue to eclipse safety, with less than half (42%) of organizations striking a balance between AI development and security investment. Just 28% of organizations embed security into transformation initiatives from the outset—forcing many to scramble to retrofit defenses later, often under duress. This reactive approach places growing pressure on already stretched security teams.

The report says that more than half of the executives surveyed expressed concern about increase in cyber threats associated with the widespread accessibility of AI tools.  A third of them said that “AI is amplifying existing attack vectors, making detection significantly more challenging while also being directly leveraged in cyberattacks.”

As an example of these AI-enhanced threats, the report cites the Morris II AI worm, which tricks LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini into generating malicious prompts that can be used to extract sensitive data from email and send spam through compromised AI email assistants.  The Morris II worm is particularly concerning because it demonstrates “the ability of attackers to hijack AI models and use them for persistent cyber threats.”