Mohanty is an award-winning AI leader & entrepreneur. She is an Applied Science Manager at Amazon & Vice Chair of IEEE Women in Engineering.gettyCybersecurity, with its six syllables, is by no means a small word. But perhaps we can forgive it for being a mouthful, since it encompasses a very wide range of arcane disciplines. Modern businesses need to manage myriad cybersecurity best practices, ranging from cloud, information and network security to the endpoint protection of each device and application. Each practice requires different tools and skill sets, leading to an overall complexity that is very unwieldy to control. An IBM & Palo Alto Networks report estimates that "organizations juggle an average of 83 different security solutions from 29 vendors."The report, which analyzed 1,000 organizations and executives, found that current security approaches were thought to be ineffective. Roughly 80% of executives "face pressure to reduce the cost of security," even in the face of new threats. Nearly as many said their security operator workload was excessive. More than half the respondents reported that fragmentation of security solutions was limiting their ability to deal with threats.When we consider the paucity of cybersecurity professionals, reduced budgets in the face of the frequent economic downturns and the widening skills gap created with a complex web of fragmented solutions, we have a recipe for mismanagement. Combining all this complexity with the burgeoning tools and skills of bad actors, as well as the use of potentially vulnerable AI tools on both sides, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that CTOs and CISOs need something more than just platformization to implement proper security. Here, AI can provide a unified interface that lets teams monitor and control an organization’s cybersecurity defense while minimizing the breadth of skills needed by using a natural language interface. In a sense, it can help coalesce the increased security fragmentation while also bringing the standard AI benefit of reducing repetitive and tedious tasks for employees, freeing them up to work with the bigger picture. Modern Cybersecurity: A Many-Headed Beast Under Attack​A 2025 cybersecurity workforce survey of over 16,000 cybersecurity professionals by the International Information System Security Certification Consortium (ISC2) detailed the challenges faced by the sector. Respondents expressed that while hiring and promotion freezes, budget cuts and layoffs were reduced compared to 2024, economic austerity remains at organizations, adding pressure to existing teams and reducing security resilience. The survey also found skills and staff shortages were raising risk levels. The reduced hiring and investment further deepens the knowledge and competency deficits within organizations. Despite this extensive disruption, the survey indicates job satisfaction remains positive, though it points to issues with how the wider organization treats them, citing the lack of growth and upskilling. Of course, one of the biggest shifts in the sector has been caused by the use of AI on both sides of the spectrum, from cybersecurity to cybercrime. While the use of AI tools for business tasks can also create potential vulnerabilities, AI cybersecurity tools can also help companies and the sector itself. Respondents continue to “see a symbiotic future where AI enhances the cybersecurity working experience rather than replacing skilled personnel,” the ISC2 report claims, and AI even creates skill development and new job opportunities.How AI Is Transforming Cybersecurity ComplexityWhile cybersecurity teams are being asked to do more with less, the adoption of AI into the cybersecurity mandate can yield benefits when used strategically. Taking over repetitive work such as monitoring, detection and alerts, AI can help security operators focus on more discerning decisions. It has, in the process, also opened a new market for cybersecurity professionals who can manage these AI cybersecurity tools. Interestingly, roughly two-thirds of teams already using AI reported a major productivity boost. The biggest gains were seen in areas with the most traffic and demand for attention, namely network monitoring, followed by security operations, security testing, vulnerability management, threat modeling and endpoint protection. With the growth of AI in the space, nearly three-fourths of the workforce believes AI will create more specialized cybersecurity skills​, expecting demand for a new, broader set of skills alongside strategic thinking. As I mentioned, the use of AI—either in the form of agents or workflow efficiency tools in other business-related tasks—also invites new vulnerabilities, so cybersecurity professionals have a new role of ensuring they cap potential vulnerabilities and ensure data safety while staying compliant and fine-tuning policies.Meanwhile, bad actors are increasingly co-opting new AI tools, leading to an uptick in cybercrime. This means that enterprise cybersecurity must also tackle new threats, including AI-optimized social engineering attacks, data leakage and AI-powered cyberattacks. ​About half of large organizations report at least one AI-related incident, compared to 70% of smaller organizations. AI And Cybersecurity DemocratizationAI is changing cybersecurity by acting as an abstraction layer between people and complex tools. With natural language interfaces, large language models and agentic systems, analysts no longer need to master every query language, dashboard or configuration menu. They can describe what they want to investigate or achieve, and the system can translate that intent into action. This shifts complexity away from the human-tool interface and toward the machine-threat interface, where AI can operate at speed.That shift could democratize cybersecurity in three ways. First, natural language reduces the learning curve, making the field more accessible to people with strong judgment but less tool-specific training. Second, AI can embed expert knowledge into systems, giving smaller organizations access to capabilities once limited to large, specialized teams due to budget constraints. Third, AI-driven platform consolidation may reduce the number of tools teams must manage, lowering the knowledge burden and simplifying operations, thus improving efficiency.​The promise, however, comes with risks. The same AI that strengthens defense can also empower attackers, and poorly governed AI agents can introduce serious vulnerabilities. Over-reliance on a few major platforms could also create risk. Even so, AI does not eliminate cybersecurity complexity; it relocates it. By reducing the need to memorize tools, it lets professionals focus more on judgment, strategy and risk. If adopted responsibly, AI could make cybersecurity more accessible, more human-centered and more resilient.​Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?