At one global manufacturing client, an AI model flagged a potential breach pattern that turned out to be normal behavior from a test server. The system wasn’t wrong — but the humans stopped questioning it. It took a single analyst with strong data storytelling skills to realize the oversight and prevent a full production shutdown. That’s what separates automation from understanding.
The shift no security leader can ignore
When I began advising CISOs and cybersecurity leaders in critical industries, the conversations were about firewalls, audit checklists and incident response playbooks. Then automation arrived — and, soon after, artificial intelligence. Suddenly, everything we thought defined technical excellence began to evolve.
Today, AI has become both an equalizer and a differentiator. It accelerates detection, automates response and surfaces insights we couldn’t see before. But here’s the paradox: the smarter our tools become, the more human our differentiators need to be — with AI acting as a force multiplier for skills like critical thinking and data fluency.
