Cisco on AI Security: Bad Actors Move Faster, Act Now

Cisco is delivering a sobering security message to enterprise buyers. AI is helping "bad actors" move faster, and the window to get ahead of this threat is closing quickly. Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins noted that AI empowers adversaries at an unprecedented pace. What's changed is that frontier AI models, like Anthropic's Claude Mythos, can autonomously identify and exploit software vulnerabilities at a level surpassing most human security experts. In testing, Mythos found thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities over weeks, a speed no human team could match. The same model that can patch vulnerabilities can also be used to exploit them. A recent report found an 89% increase in attacks by adversaries using AI. This means enterprises must prepare for a threat environment where increasingly capable AI models will help bad actors exploit vulnerabilities. The capability floor for AI-assisted attacks has risen significantly. Where it once took days or weeks to move from a disclosed vulnerability to an exploit, that timeline is now minutes. Cisco's own team used AI to scan 1.8 billion lines of code in eight weeks, a task that would have taken eight years previously. The bottom line: The same technology accelerating legitimate security work is also accelerating attacks, making robust and swift defenses critical for everyone.