Cybersecurity incidents cost organizations an average of £2.7 million over the past year, with budgets failing to keep pace with increasing threats and skills shortages.
Red Canary's new Security Operations Trends Report found 80% of security leaders are spending more than ever on security – but that breaches and threats keep growing.
The attack surface has widened by 41% in the past 12 months, while 73% of security leaders say the time from detecting an attack to resolution has increased.
Meanwhile, organizations are hampered by a lack of skills, with 75% saying they have skills shortages around intrusion detection and 72% around incident response.
Security operations center (SOC) teams are struggling with the challenges of securing cloud environments, identities, and AI technologies amid evolving threats, amplifying the risk and business impact of cyber attacks.
And the cost is high, with security leaders estimating that, on average, cyber incidents cost their organization $3.7 million over the last year. Nearly half (46%) said they had suffered from an outage or disruption to their services as a consequence of attacks.
As a result, Red Canary said enterprises are turning to AI, with the top use cases in security operations today being detection analytics at 65%, intrusion detection at 59%, and SIEM management at 54%.
However, 75% of security leaders said they worry that while AI helps security teams work faster, it could ultimately reduce their ability to solve problems independently.
"CISOs, like their peers in lines of business, know they need to augment their teams with AI and automation, but finding security products and services that deliver actual value is hard amidst all the hype and empty marketing,” said Brian Beyer, co-founder of Red Canary.
“They need to go all in on expert-supervised AI agents that support security analysts in threat detection, investigation, and response, with the focus on proven solutions powered by LLMs trained on real-world data to deliver unmatched speed and accuracy – not just the latest shiny tool or a legacy vendor repackaging itself as AI.”
Security leaders see AI as a necessity – in fact, 85% say the real risk is being overwhelmed by the thousand missed threats that will get through if they don't automate more.
“AI is already transforming how security teams operate. SOC teams are under immense pressure, and AI is giving security analysts the ability to cut through noise and respond to threats faster," said Beyer.
"AI works best as a force multiplier, augmenting human judgment rather than replacing it. The organizations that lean into this shift now will not only ease the strain on security analysts but put themselves in the best position to anticipate emerging threats and stay ahead of disruption in an increasingly unpredictable environment.”
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