Artificial Intelligence and cybersecurity: the great challenge for Spanish companies
Artificial Intelligence represents a great opportunity for Spanish companies, which can use all the capabilities offered by this technology to be more competitive, gain productivity and make better business decisions.
However, in the wrong hands, AI can also become a malicious vector that directly attacks the IT security of any organisation. In this regard, the data shared by Cisco in its "Cisco Cybersecurity Readiness Index 2025" is striking : only 2% of companies in our country are truly prepared to face cybersecurity risks in the era of Artificial Intelligence.
From the American multinational, they claim that more than 80% of Spanish companies have suffered security incidents related to AI during the last year, and a large majority of them are facing major breaches mainly due to the use of unmanaged devices and the lack of control over generative AI applications.
Shadow AI and uncontrolled access
One of the biggest challenges companies are currently facing is to understand who is using AI solutions that are not authorised by the companies themselves, and in what way. And even more so, what corporate data (often confidential) is being shared in solutions such as ChatGPT and others, which could use this data to train their own models.
In this regard, and in what is already known as Shadow AI, 67% of respondents to this study admit that they cannot detect unauthorised AI implementations.
But this is not the only problem: 87% of employees access corporate networks from unmanaged devices and less than half of companies are confident that their workers understand the real risks posed by inappropriate use of AI.
All this against a backdrop where seven out of ten companies expect to be the victim of a cybersecurity incident in the next two years.
Smarter defences
The good news is that, while it can be a threat, artificial intelligence can also be part of the solution and is already emerging as a key ally in strengthening companies' cybersecurity strategies.
As the Cisco study states, in Spain 84% of organisations already use solutions that incorporate AI capabilities to detect threats, and more importantly, 67% also use them in incident response and recovery tasks. These data show a clear confidence in the potential of artificial intelligence to anticipate attacks and reduce their impact.
The study's authors also point out that, in order to maximise the effectiveness of this strategy, adoption must be accompanied by the necessary investment. However, this is not always the case: only 28% of companies allocate more than 10% of their IT budget to cybersecurity, revealing a critical gap between the use of technology and its strategic implementation.
This duality forces a rethink of current approaches. It is not enough to incorporate advanced tools; it is essential to develop a comprehensive, coherent and proactive vision that places security at the heart of digital transformation.
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