AI is officially mainstream in security operations. According to Prophet Security's State of AI in Security Operations 2026 report (produced from ViB’s survey of 250+ cybersecurity pros), 40% of security teams now use AI daily. Another 56% are currently testing it out, and only 4% have no plans to adopt it.
For the teams already using AI, what is actually changing? Here are the ten biggest takeaways from the report.
1. Security teams are drowning in alerts
The average security team gets about 100 alerts every day, but larger companies often deal with close to 1,000. In fact, over a quarter of teams face more than 500 alerts daily.
Unfortunately, team sizes haven't kept up with the workload. While some massive organizations have over 100 analysts, many are running on skeleton crews of fewer than ten people. Because of this, it takes an average of 75 minutes to thoroughly investigate a single alert, and alerts often sit untouched for nearly an hour before anyone even looks at them.
