Axios AI+NY Summit: AI hesitancy keeps cybersecurity leaders up at night

NEW YORK — Digital resiliency and technology leaders at a June 3 Expert Voices roundtable urged each other to "lean in" to AI tools.

Why it matters: Bad actors are weaponizing artificial intelligence to disrupt operations and violate users' privacy, forcing tech safety experts to adapt to protect their organizations.

Axios' Colin Demarest and Megan Morrone moderated the conversation, which was sponsored by DXC Technology.

What they're saying: "The adversary is loud and wild" and the threat of a hack is blaring "red," Mastercard deputy chief cybersecurity officer Alissa Abdullah said.

• "Trust at scale" must be a priority, Abdullah added, and leaders must "lean into controls and governance so that users and consumers feel very comfortable using AI."
• RunPod co-founder and CEO Zhen Lu said he provides his staff "with the right situation where they can just go ham with AI, because I know that that's what's going to give them the opportunity to innovate."

Threat level: Getting it right can be a matter of national security, said Cape co-founder and CEO John Doyle.

• "It's very much a race that's framed as a race … against our primary adversaries, mainly China," he said.
• "Serving defense customers … is about as high-stakes a game as you can be in."

By the numbers: Sophos' median response time to cybersecurity disruptions has dropped to about 89 seconds due to automation, SVP of engineering and AI Nash Borges said.

Yes, but: Catching up is still possible, with responsible adoption paramount.

• Of 662 disruptions Sophos tracked this year, "only one of them had evidence of gen AI," Borges said.
• "Things are moving so fast," Lu said, and agents are "dragging us along for the ride."

The bottom line: "Just because we don't hear the adversary talking about their Mythos equivalent, that doesn't mean they don't have it and aren't using it," Abdullah said.

Content from the sponsor's remarks:

Workers are being inundated with tools, data and information, DXC Technology platforms vice president Lisa Beaudoin said.

• "Things are not getting simpler," she said, and DXC's job is to "have the governance and the resiliency and the trust and the security … at scale."