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Most companies operate with one of two assumptions about cyber disruption: that strong enough defenses will prevent it, or that a well-written business continuity plan will manage it when it happens. Our research, drawn from a global survey of 1,000 senior executives across 20 industries in 13 countries, suggests both assumptions are dangerously wrong.
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The cybersecurity outlook for small and medium-sized businesses can seem dire. Cybercriminal and nation-state cyberattacks appear to be on the rise, especially against utilities and small businesses. At the same time, there are new AI-enabled cyber risks, including AI agents from frontier labs breaching confinement and attacking other companies. Generative AI and machine-learning models have also streamlined traditional attack vectors. Phishing lures are now hyper-personalized, vulnerability discovery is exponentially faster, and ransomware operations are automated and ubiquitous.
AI is making it faster and cheaper than ever to turn ideas into prototypes, products, and businesses—but that abundance creates new challenges for leaders. In episode 3 of a special four-part series on how AI is changing leadership, we look at the ways industry leaders are using AI to truly gain a competitive edge and innovate for the future. Cisco Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel explains how AI is changing the pace and nature of innovation, why human judgment and taste become more important when everyone has access to the same tools, and how companies can use AI to tackle problems they couldn’t have solved before. He also discusses the risks of AI agents, why organizations need new approaches to security and oversight, and how leaders can build a culture that embraces experimentation without sacrificing rigor or accountability.
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