Google Cloud

The most common cross-industry applications for AI agents reported in the study include security operations and cybersecurity (46%).

40% of agentic AI early adopters saw a good return on strengthening security operations, compared to only 30% of average users.

When choosing Large Language Model (LLM) providers, executives' top concern is now privacy and security.

Data privacy and security are among the top three LLM provider considerations for 37% of respondents, followed by integration with existing systems and cost.

Data privacy and security are among the top three LLM provider considerations for 37% of respondents, followed by integration with existing systems and cost.

Enhancing trust in the threat intelligence vendor's capabilities to gather new sources of information was cited by 47% of IT and cybersecurity leaders as a benefit of using AI in threat intelligence.

Providing actionable recommendations and next steps to uplevel junior analysts was cited by 63% of IT and cybersecurity leaders as a benefit of using AI in threat intelligence.

37% of IT and cybersecurity leaders say stale information is a challenge in actioning threat intelligence.

Simplifying the process of searching and querying data for relevant information was cited by 53% of IT and cybersecurity leaders as a benefit of using AI in threat intelligence.

61% of IT and cybersecurity leaders say too many feeds is a challenge in actioning threat intelligence.

86% of IT and cybersecurity leaders agreed that they "must" use AI to improve their ability to operationalise threat intelligence.

49% of IT and cybersecurity leaders say the difficulty in determining which intelligence applies is a challenge in actioning threat intelligence.

More than 80% of organisations already use threat intelligence or are planning to across eight major use-cases.

60% of IT and cybersecurity leaders say too few analysts is a challenge in actioning threat intelligence.

82% of IT and cybersecurity leaders worry about missing threats due to the volume of alerts and data they are faced with.

59% of IT and cybersecurity leaders say it being difficult to verify the validity and/or relevance of threats is a challenge in actioning threat intelligence.

Making threat intelligence more accessible to different stakeholders was cited by 68% of IT and cybersecurity leaders as a benefit of using AI in threat intelligence.

Enabling the ability to foccus on higher-priority tasks via time saved was cited by 60% of IT and cybersecurity leaders as a benefit of using AI in threat intelligence.

79% of IT and cybersecurity leaders said that external threat intelligence providers should help "uplevel junior staff or embed a threat intelligence (CTI) analyst" into their team.

80% of IT and cybersecurity leaders said that threat intelligence providers should offer information sources that are both broad and deep.

80% of IT and cybersecurity leaders said their senior leadership team underestimates threats to the organisation.

35% of IT and cybersecurity leaders are "very concerned" that their organization might be missing real threats/incidents due to the amount of alerts and data they are faced it.

44% of IT and cybersecurity leaders say there still being a lot of manual effort involved is a challenge in actioning threat intelligence.

Improving the capability to prioritize threats and vulnerabilities was cited by 68% of IT and cybersecurity leaders as a benefit of using AI in threat intelligence.

86% of IT and cybersecurity leaders said that their organisation needs to improve its understanding of the threat landscape.

85% of IT and cybersecurity leaders say that their organisation could focus more time and energy on emerging critical threats.

72% of IT and cybersecurity leaders said they are mostly reactive to threats.

Improving decision-making with more complete, accurate, relevant, and timely information was cited by 59% of IT and cybersecurity leaders as a benefit of using AI in threat intelligence.

Enhancing trust in the threat intelligence vendor's capabilities to analyze and correlate information was cited by 55% of IT and cybersecurity leaders as a benefit of using AI in threat intelligence.

47% of IT and cybersecurity leaders are "concerned" that their organization might be missing real threats/incidents due to the amount of alerts and data they are faced it.

59% of IT and cybersecurity leaders say it being hard to derive clear action from threat intelligence data is a challenge in actioning threat intelligence.

66% of IT and cybersecurity leaders state that they struggle to share threat intelligence with relevant teams.

Improving efficiency by generating easy-to-read summaries was cited most frequently (69%) by IT and cybersecurity leaders as a benefit of using AI in threat intelligence.

61% of IT and cybersecurity leaders say too many feeds is a challenge in actioning threat intelligence.