2025 State of AI-Driven Security Automation

How AI is accelerating security automation, the speed and impact of adoption, the rise of Agentic AI, and the biggest barriers organizations must overcome.

REPORT OVERVIEW

The State of Security Automation

This report is based on responses from more than 1,000 security professionals across the United States, including CISOs, VPs of Information Security, SOC managers, analysts, security engineers, and platform teams.
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The findings reveal a clear strategic shift: AI-driven automation is no longer experimental or optional. It is becoming the foundation of modern security operations.

81% of respondents say AI automation will be critical to their security strategy over the next 3-5 years. But only 6% have fully integrated it across their environment. Most organizations remain stuck in early stages—fragmented workflows, limited integration, and persistent manual triage. As autonomous systems begin to take hold, the urgency to operationalize AI is accelerating.
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The gap between intention and execution is the defining challenge security leaders face right now.

Key Report Findings

81%

Say AI-driven automation will be critical to their security strategy within 3-5 years.

54%

Cite skills gaps as the top barrier to scaling automation.

53%

Plan to adopt agentic AI for autonomous threat detection.

45%

Took nearly three months to roll out a single automation initiative.

Inside the Data

Security leaders say automation is mission-critical. But timelines are slow, teams are understaffed, and most have only scratched the surface. These are the numbers that expose the disconnect.

Security leaders are treating automation as foundational to the future of their operations. 43% say it will be very important to their strategy over the next 3-5 years. Another 38% say it will be critical.

Leaders are under pressure to move faster, handle more threats and incidents with fewer people, at scale.

Automation is the plan. Whether it works will depend on who moves first.

81% Say AI-Driven Automation Is Now Mission-Critical

53% Plan to Adopt Agentic AI

Agentic AI is gaining traction across key areas of security operations. 53% of organizations plan to introduce agentic AI for threat detection and classification. 46% expect to use AI agents for real-time policy enforcement, and 43% plan to apply them to automated isolation of users or devices based on behavioral anomalies.

While 52% still expect human oversight in high-risk scenarios, 27% are ready to let AI operate autonomously in core parts of the security stack. Only 3% say they have no plans to adopt agentic AI—signaling that this shift is already underway.

46% of security leaders say more roles are shifting to oversight, exception handling, and strategic analysis. Another 45% are centralizing automation into dedicated teams, and 44% say they need more engineers to build and maintain workflows. The traditional analyst-heavy SOC is giving way to smaller, more specialized teams built around automation strategy, not manual triage.

The days of staring at dashboards are numbered.

43% say the SOC as we know it, is disappearing

45% Took Nearly Three Months to Automate

Despite growing demand for security automation, 45% of security teams took nearly three months to roll out a single initiative. Only 15% launched in under one month. These timelines reflect deep internal drag: integration complexity, siloed ownership, or lack of resourcing. While proof-of-concept efforts are accelerating, most organizations still struggle to deploy automation fast enough to keep pace with modern threats.

In an environment where seconds matter, “months to automation” is a growing liability.

Where Security Automation is Headed Next

Security teams are entering a new phase of pressure and acceleration. AI is being integrated into daily operations, and Time to Automation is becoming the most important security metric—a benchmark for how quickly teams can design, deploy, and operationalize automation.

Organizations are forming dedicated automation teams and shifting security roles toward oversight and execution. Agentic AI is already being planned for threat detection, policy enforcement, and containment. At the same time, security leaders are being pushed to build audit trails, define decision paths, and meet rising compliance demands.

Over the next five years, security teams will be measured by how quickly they can automate critical workflows—and how reliably they can control them.

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