AI’s Effect on Cybersecurity Teams in 2025
- Emmy Henz
- 41 minutes ago
- 2 min read
AI has officially moved from a “future conversation” to something security teams are dealing with every day. In 2025, its impact is showing up across tooling, attacker behavior, team structure, and overall governance expectations. Below is a straightforward look at what’s actually happening, based on current reporting and industry sources.
Attackers are using AI to increase phishing and synthetic social engineering.
AI is starting to influence the quality and frequency of phishing attempts. Industry reporting shows phishing volume remained high in early 2025, and multiple assessments point to attackers using AI to produce more convincing emails, voice deepfakes, and other synthetic content. These attacks are more personalized and harder to spot. Defense strategies need to go beyond basic awareness training. Strong email authentication, MFA, better content analysis, and training exercises that actually mimic AI-enabled attacks are becoming essential.
AI is changing cybersecurity teams - improving efficiency but also increasing pressure.
AI is helping reduce some of the repetitive work that normally slows down security teams. At the same time, surveys in 2025 show rising stress across security teams as threat volume and complexity continue to grow. Recent reporting points to both the benefit of offloading routine tasks and the concern that poorly planned automation can create workload gaps or add pressure in other areas. Successful organizations are putting more emphasis on re-skilling, clear career paths, and tracking whether AI actually reduces analyst workload - not just increases output.
Security tools are adding AI to cut down repetitive SOC work
Many security platforms are now adding AI agents to take on the day-to-day tasks analysts usually have to do manually, like alert enrichment, correlation, and recommending next steps. Teams are adjusting their workflows so AI can handle more of the volume, while analysts stay focused on the actual decision-making. Industry guidance, including from Gartner, continues to stress the importance of solid governance and keeping humans in the loop instead of letting automation run without oversight.
AI governance is now a required part of cybersecurity strategy.
Industry guidance continues to call out the operational risks that come with agentic AI - things like who can access the model, how data is handled, how machine identities are managed, and whether AI systems can take actions without proper review. These aren’t “future concerns” anymore; they’re now part of normal security planning.
Organizations are being encouraged to:
Add AI systems to their risk registers
Request clear documentation from vendors
Apply identity and access controls to any AI agents
Recommended actions based on current industry reporting
Treat all AI systems like high-risk assets and govern them accordingly.
Shift SOC metrics to measure analyst workload and quality of decision-making.
Increase investment in phishing and deepfake detection as attackers continue to adopt AI.
Train teams on how to work with AI tools, and include AI-enabled threats in exercises.
AI is reshaping cybersecurity across the board. Tools are becoming more automated, attackers are moving faster with AI-generated content, and workforce pressures are growing. The organizations that stay ahead will be the ones that pair AI adoption with strong governance, real training, and clear human oversight.
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