Artificial intelligence is accelerating every part of the cybersecurity landscape. Offensive teams—both criminal and state-sponsored—are now using AI to automate reconnaissance, develop exploits, and scale social engineering faster than human defenders can respond. The rise of agentic AI systems—autonomous AI agents capable of planning, adapting, and executing complex tasks—has further amplified this shift. These systems can chain together actions without direct human input, creating new forms of persistence and unpredictability in the threat environment.
For defenders, this “acceleration effect” doesn’t change the fundamentals of good cybersecurity, but it redefines the tempo. Core defenses—identity controls, configuration management, vulnerability remediation, and monitoring—remain essential, yet they must now operate with greater speed, consistency, and automation. Manual exception management, once a tolerated inefficiency, becomes an exploitable weakness when adversaries move at machine speed.
This session explores how cyber defense teams can modernize their operations to keep pace with AI-driven threats. Attendees will gain practical insights into integrating automation responsibly, preparing for the emergence of agentic AI in both offense and defense, and maintaining resilience in an environment where decisions increasingly happen faster than humans can think.
