The dual application of AI in cybersecurity: using AI to defend systems (threat detection, anomaly detection, automated incident response) and the new attack vectors AI creates (AI-generated phishing, automated vulnerability discovery, adversarial attacks on ML systems). The field is in an arms race where both attackers and defenders are increasingly AI-powered.
Why it matters
AI makes existing cyber threats faster and cheaper to execute — a phishing email written by an LLM is more convincing and costs nothing to personalize. But AI also enables defenses that would be impossible manually, like analyzing millions of network events per second for anomalies. Security teams that don't use AI will lose to attackers who do.