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As 2025 comes to a close, some of our Nexus contributors and experts have provided us with a look back on the year in cybersecurity, and their predictions for the next year within their industries and specialty areas. Today, Steven Sim, chair of the OT ISAC advisory committee, reflects on how generative AI automates cyberattacks, and predicts difficult financial choices for CISO in the coming year.
We have seen growth of generative AI use among attackers and defenders.
Threat actors are increasingly using generative AI to automate the attack chain including ransomware operations, reducing the mean-time-to-exploitation from the time of vulnerability disclosure.
Correspondingly, AI defenses are also being stepped up. It is evident during the Singapore International Cyber Week 2025 Govware showcase that there are more AI "copilots" and even some "autopilots" that do work from triaging alerts to automated incident response.
As AI is increasingly showcased among cybersecurity vendors, the risk of AI-washing also elevates correspondingly. It remains to be seen whether pre-crime "autopilots" that claim no need for human-in-the-loop will be effective.
Cost pressures will hit cyber teams hard as they wrack their brains to achieve more with less.
In the current economic climate, it will no longer be adequate to use a fraction of an acquired or subscribed unified threat protection solution. There is strong impetus to maximise investments to juice out every last drop.
As the need to manage emerging risk and enable opportunities with emerging technologies such as AI is brought into greater focus, the sweet spot to balance innovation adoption and cost-effective cybersecurity controls within tolerable friction is ever harder to define in the wake of increasing pressures from both ends.
A widening attack surface amid both innovation and cost pressures coupled with cybersecurity professionals playing catch-up on capabilities with managing risk from emerging technologies is a perfect recipe for cyber disaster.
Steven Sim is chair of the OT-ISAC Advisory Committee and has worked for more than 28 years in the cybersecurity field with large end-user enterprises and critical infrastructure organizations. He has led the Group Cybersecurity Centre of Expertise (CoE), undertaken global CISO roles, and driven award-winning CSO50 security governance and management initiatives.
