CSC CISO Outlook 2026 finds AI both opportunity and cyber risk

CSC’s CISO Outlook 2026 is a useful barometer of how the people responsible for keeping large organizations safe are internalizing AI. A clear majority of surveyed CISOs and CTOs now see AI as a net opportunity for cybersecurity—particularly for detecting domain hijacking, DNS abuse, and ransomware—yet almost all are simultaneously worried about AI‑driven attacks and the data exposure that comes from plugging third‑party models into sensitive systems.([cscglobal.com](https://www.cscglobal.com/service/press/csc-report-illuminates-how-ai-affecting-enterprise/)) That schizophrenia captures where we are in the transition from classical to AI‑augmented security.

For the AGI race, this matters less for model capability than for deployment tempo. If boards and CISOs come to view advanced models as essential to defense, they will lobby for continued access to frontier systems even as regulators and national‑security agencies push for tighter controls, as we’re seeing with Anthropic. That dynamic could create a strange coalition between labs and blue‑team practitioners arguing that withholding high‑end models from defenders is itself a risk. At the same time, near‑universal concern about third‑party AI access will accelerate the shift toward self‑hosted, regionally compliant, or vendor‑locked enterprise AI platforms.

In practice, the report suggests that security teams will increasingly adopt a dual‑use mindset: aggressively deploying AI for detection and response while assuming adversaries will do the same. That will nudge large organizations toward more automated, agent‑driven security operations centers, which in turn will be natural early adopters of more general, tool‑using AI systems as they emerge.