Arctic Wolf Finds AI Trust Gap in Security Operations Survey

Arctic Wolf released its 2026 AI & Cybersecurity Trends Report, based on a global survey of security and IT decision-makers. The report found that organizations have increased AI use in security-related work but still show limited trust in AI handling autonomous security actions.

The findings come as respondents reported ongoing cyber risk. Nearly two-thirds (63%) said they experienced a significant cybersecurity incident in the past year, and among affected organizations, 48% reported disruptions lasting two weeks or longer. At the same time, 96% of leaders said they were confident their teams could keep pace with the volume and complexity of threats.

In the survey results, 94% of organizations use LLMs, and 94% said AI capabilities influence cybersecurity purchasing decisions. More than half (51%) considered AI functionality a requirement when evaluating vendors. However, only 14% said they made AI central to their security operations strategy, and 53% said they trust AI to perform even narrowly defined security actions such as blocking malicious IP addresses at a firewall.

The report also described what respondents expected AI to do and what they cited as barriers. Adam Marrè, Chief Information Security Officer at Arctic Wolf, said, “Organizations have already decided that AI will play a central role in cybersecurity. The challenge now is trust,” and added that security leaders want speed and scale while needing confidence in outcomes that are trustworthy, explainable, and aligned to their business. The report attributed slower adoption of Agentic AI to data privacy concerns (51%), lack of human intuition (49%), and concerns over accountability and inaccurate outcomes.

It also reported that 85% of respondents believed AI would improve their ability to detect new or elusive threats and that 72% believed AI was more capable than humans at identifying threats.

Provided by Globe Newswire on behalf of Arctic Wolf. Click to read original content. The original article was written by Decision Insights Editorial.