IBM's 2026 Cost of a Data Breach report: organizations making extensive use of security AI and automation lowered their average breach costs by $1.93 million.
I believe it. I also think it comes with a condition.
AI on defense is only as good as your ability to check it. When I built AI agents for our case workflow, the useful question was never "is this smart?" It was "when it's wrong, how fast do we catch it?"
That's why I care about guardrail testing as much as automation. An AI that triages fast and fails quietly isn't saving time. It's moving the mistake somewhere harder to find.
Automate the noise. Keep the judgment human. Audit both.