IBM cyber response chief: After 26 years in incident response, I’m more concerned about burnout than AI

I’ve spent two and a half decades responding to cyber incidents or leading teams of people who do. Over that time, I’ve watched the threat landscape evolve from opportunistic attacks and early internet worms to organized cybercrime, ransomware syndicates, and nation-state campaigns. Each major shift brought new technology, new tactics, and new challenges for defenders.

But one consistent part of the job is the people. The analysts who spent nights and weekends investigating suspicious activity, the incident responders making high-stakes decisions with incomplete information and working around the clock to restore critical systems.

Incident response has always been a human profession disguised as a technical one. Which is why I believe we’re approaching a challenge that isn’t getting enough attention: the human impact of machine-speed threats. Most discussions about AI in cybersecurity focus on capability. What will attackers be able to automate? How sophisticated will AI-enabled attacks become? Those are important questions. But from where I sit, they’re not the most urgent ones.

Recent global research found that AI-enabled attacks increased 56% over the past year. The question isn’t just what AI enables attackers to do, it’s what that acceleration means for the people expected to defend against it every day. The industry often talks about cyberattacks in financial........

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