Evercore sees AI as growing cybersecurity threat

Investing.com -- Evercore analysts said the increasing capabilities of frontier AI systems will create larger security challenges for cybersecurity companies as autonomous agents make sophisticated attacks more scalable.

The firm said AI removes the human constraint that has historically limited the scale of sophisticated cyberattacks. Advanced capabilities can now be replicated across thousands of autonomous agents, which should increase both attack volume and sophistication.

Sophisticated attacks currently require human labor for tasks including identifying targets, uncovering vulnerabilities, developing exploits, obtaining credentials, moving laterally, maintaining persistence, and adapting to defender responses. Agentic AI potentially removes much of that constraint, according to the analysts.

The firm said AI can deploy thousands of semi-independent agents continuously to discover, probe, and exploit vulnerabilities, compared to a hacker operating several targets. This temporarily tilts the balance of cyber offense and defense in favor of attackers in the near-term.

Evercore said frontier-model capabilities entering the enterprise should expand the attack surface, increase the number of machine and agentic identities requiring security, and raise the potential scale and speed of cyberattacks.

The firm continues to view cybersecurity as a durable area of enterprise technology spending. Identity vendors are positioned to benefit as enterprises focus on governing access across users, agents, and other non-human identities, including NYSE:OKTA, NASDAQ:PANW, NYSE:CYBR, NYSE:SAIL, and NASDAQ:CRWD.

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