Artificial intelligence (AI) adoption in cybersecurity surges across Malaysia with 90 percent are already using it, a survey from IDC showed last Thursday.
The IDC study, commissioned by Fortinet, reveals that AI has moved beyond hype to become a critical enabler of speed, accuracy, and scale in security operations, and is now shaping hiring priorities, investment strategies, and the architecture of modern cybersecurity teams.
According to the firm, AI is transforming both sides of the cybersecurity equation.
For defenders, it offers the potential to automate detection, accelerate response, and scale threat intelligence with unprecedented speed.
But the same capabilities are now being leveraged by attackers, who are using AI to launch stealthier, faster, and more adaptive attacks.
According to the IDC Study, nearly 50 percent of organizations In Malaysia said that they have encountered AI-powered cyber threats in the past year.
These threats are scaling fast, with a 2 times increase reported by 54 percent and a 3 times increase by 24 percent of organizations.
These attacks are harder to detect and often exploit blind spots in visibility, governance, and internal processes.
Meanwhile, AI is no longer a future consideration; it’s an operational reality, said the firm.
The survey showed more than nine in ten organizations across Malaysia are already using AI in their security environment.
Organizations are rapidly progressing from AI-powered detection to more advanced use cases such as automated response, predictive threat modelling, AI-driven incident response, AI-powered threat intelligence, and behavioral analytics.
These top five use cases reflect how detection has become table stakes, while response, prediction, and orchestration are now the next frontier.
GenerativeAI (GenAI) is also gaining traction, with adoption focused on light-touch tasks such as running playbooks, updating rules and policies, social engineering detection, writing detection rules, and guided investigations.
However, trust in autonomous action remains limited. Use cases like auto-remediation and guided remediation are not widely deployed, signaling that the market is still in the “co-pilot” phase of adoption.
The shift toward AI-first cybersecurity is also reshaping how teams are built.
Across the Malaysia, the top five cybersecurity roles in demand include security data scientists, threat intelligence analysts, AI security engineers, AI security researchers, and AI-specific incident response professionals.
According to the survey, organizations are no longer just deploying AI tools; they are building their cybersecurity teams around AI capabilities. This reflects a broader trend where the workforce is rapidly evolving to match the pace of technological adoption.
Meanwhile, cybersecurity budgets are trending upward, with nearly 74 percent of organizations reporting an increase.
However, these increases were less than 5 percent. This suggests that while budgets are growing, spending remains focused on covering rising operational and talent costs.
Organizations appear to be carefully prioritizing how and where these limited increases are deployed.
The top five areas of investment over the next 12–18 months include identity security, network security, SASE/Zero Trust, cyber resilience, and cloud-native application protection, indicating a strategic shift from infrastructure-heavy spending toward more targeted, risk-centric priorities that reflect the evolving threat landscape.
While cybersecurity is gaining executive attention, many teams remain under-resourced and lack dedicated focus, the survey highlighted.
Only 6 percent of an organization’s total workforce is allocated to internal information technology (IT), and just 13 percent of that is focused on cybersecurity.
Less than one in six organizations have a standalone Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), and only 6 percent have purpose-built teams handling Security operations and threat hunting. This lack of specialization is impacting performance.
More than half of the respondents cited an overwhelming surge in threats, with additional pressures from tool sprawl and talent retention challenges.
Execution suffers as teams struggle with burnout and complexity, reinforcing the need for smarter resourcing models.
As complexity grows, the survey showed organizations are shifting toward unified cybersecurity frameworks that deliver end-to-end visibility, operational efficiency, and simplified management.
Nearly all respondents (96 percent) are either converging security and networking or evaluating how to do so.
In addition, consolidation is no longer viewed as just a cost-cutting measure, it’s seen as a strategic necessity.
80 percent of respondents are actively considering vendor consolidation, driven by benefits like faster support, cost savings, better integration, and improved security posture.
“The findings of this survey reflect the growing maturity of cybersecurity across the region,
“Organizations are no longer experimenting with AI, they are embedding it across threat detection, incident response, and team design,” Simon Piff, Research Vice-President, IDC Asia-Pacific.
“This signals a new era of security operations that is smarter, faster, and more adaptive to the evolving risk landscape,
“AI is fundamentally reshaping how threats are identified, prioritized, and acted upon, and this evolution demands a parallel shift in cybersecurity strategy and talent,” he added.
Kevin Wong, Country Manager at Fortinet Malaysia, said CISOs across Malaysia are entering a more advanced phase of cybersecurity planning — one where AI is not just augmenting defenses but influencing how organizations structure teams, allocate budgets, and prioritize threats.
“At Fortinet, we are helping customers embrace this shift by embedding AI across the platform, enabling faster detection, smarter responses, and more resilient operations as cyber risks become more complex and distributed,
“As this complexity grows, so does the need for converged, intelligent, and adaptive security models that can keep pace,” he added.
IDC surveyed 550 IT and security leaders across 11 Asia-Pacific markets—including Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and New Zealand — between February and April 2025.