CISOs are keen on agentic AI, but they’re not going all-in yet

CISOs are upbeat about the potential of AI tools in security operations, new research shows, but the priority focus for many right now is filling workforce gaps.

Findings from Splunk’s annual CISO Report show AI adoption is a key priority, with 68% highlighting investment in this domain as a leading focus alongside improvements to threat detection and response capabilities and identity and access management (IAM).

Indeed, around 92% said the technology is helping their teams to review more security events while 89% reported improved data correlation.

Yet despite this, just 6% have fully deployed agentic AI in security operations, pointing to sluggish adoption rates.

More than one-third (39%) of CISOs who have partially or fully adopted agentic AI strongly agree it has increased their teams’ reporting speed - more than twice the rate of those who are still exploring the technology.

More than eight-in-ten (82%) of CISOs, meanwhile, believe agentic AI will increase the amount of data reviewed, and 82% said it will increase correlation and response speeds.

While the potential benefits of AI are tantalizing for security leaders, the other side of the coin is that 86% fear agentic AI will increase the sophistication of social engineering attacks.

Similarly, 82% believe it will increase deployment speed and complexity of persistence mechanisms.

New tools mean nothing without talent for CISOs

Although AI is increasingly prevalent, CISOs don't expect technology to replace any security analyst jobs. Instead, they're prioritizing human capital to address critical skills gaps: upskilling current workforces, hiring new full-time employees, and engaging contractors.

The skillsets CISOs are most lacking in their security programs are threat hunting, engineering support - for vendor tooling, detection engineering, or maintenance - software development, and network and cloud architecture.

"Because of AI, CISOs will need to constantly reskill, upskill and bring in new talent required to achieve the ROI leadership wants. In this sense, AI will be creating jobs, not eliminating them," said Ryan Fetterman, senior manager, SURGe by Cisco Foundation AI.

Among those who rank threat hunting as their team’s biggest skills gap, 71% said upskilling their current workforce was a top means for addressing shortages. T

hose with bigger engineering gaps tend to focus on hiring new full-time employees, while hiring contractors is the answer for most of those whose biggest gap is software development.

This is easier said than done, however, with only 16% expecting to fill all their shortages.

“Investing in your teams, in part, means rethinking your hiring strategy. I challenge conventional wisdom that demands a cybersecurity degree or a decade of experience,” said Fanning.

"In a field where technical knowledge becomes obsolete quickly, a candidate’s foundational understanding of computing, systems, and networks — as well as curiosity, adaptability, and problem-solving skills — are far more valuable. Cyber knowledge can be taught, where needed, on top of that foundation.”

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