Gigamon 2026 Survey Finds 66% of Financial Services Use AI for Security Actions

Gigamon released findings from the Gigamon 2026 Hybrid Cloud Security Survey: Financial Services Report, addressing how financial services organizations used AI in security functions alongside risks tied to AI-enabled threats, encrypted traffic, and visibility gaps.

In organizations that reported at least one breach, 98 percent reported material business impact, including financial losses, increased cyber insurance premiums, data loss, and/or regulatory consequences. The survey also reported that 66 percent of financial services organizations said AI initiated security functions without human intervention, compared with 53 percent across industries overall.

The report described security outcomes and incident patterns tied to AI and hybrid cloud environments. It said 77 percent of financial services organizations experienced a breach involving AI, 54 percent reported an increase in AI-powered social engineering attacks such as phishing and smishing, and 88 percent cited “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks as a major concern. It also reported that 47 percent saw an increase in attacks targeting AI and large language model (LLM) deployments.

The findings attributed differences in detection and operational visibility to fragmented tooling and telemetry gaps. It said 94 percent invested in new security technologies to improve detection and visibility, while 42 percent reported that it took longer to detect breaches, and 52 percent cited fragmented security tools as the biggest challenge. Malcolm Kelly of SMBC Group said, “AI is forcing financial institutions to accelerate innovation and risk management at the same time,” and that organizations needed “visibility into how data, applications, and AI systems interact across hybrid cloud environments so they can identify exposure early and respond with confidence.” The report also included Philip D. Harris of IDC, who said, “Visibility into data in motion is becoming a foundational requirement not only for security operations, but also for governance, compliance, and operational resilience.” Gigamon said network-derived telemetry in the form of metadata, packets, and flows complements metrics, events, logs, and traces (MELT) data to provide context for security investigations and control validation.

Provided by Globe Newswire on behalf of Gigamon. Click to read original content.