MELBOURNE, Australia. 20th November 2025 – ThreatQuotient, a Securonix company and leader in threat intelligence platforms, has released this year’s Evolution of Cybersecurity Automation and AI Adoption Report. This year’s study delves into how cyber security teams are operationalising artificial intelligence, examining the key drivers behind AI deployment – from threat detection and response acceleration to predictive analytics and decision support. According to the report, 100% of Australian cyber security professionals (versus 97% of global respondents) now regard automation, increasingly powered by AI technologies, as essential to business operations – a significant rise from 86% of Australian respondents in the previous year. In fact, Australian cyber security professionals have reported the most consistent upward trend in cyber security automation adoption since 2022.
Opinion Matters did the research, which surveyed
750 senior cyber security experts from five industrial sectors in the UK, USA, and Australia. All of the companies had more than 2,000 employees. The study is now in its fifth year. It looks at how cyber security automation has changed over time and how AI is being used by cyber security professionals to deal with rising cyberthreats more quickly and efficiently.
95% of people still run into problems, even though everyone wants automation.
Ninety-five percent of Australians who answered the poll still have trouble with cyber security automation, and like those in other nations, technology problems are the biggest problem. But when it comes to using AI, the problems are more about people, like their talents, getting management to agree, and getting users to use it. Australia is different from the UK and US in that it has the most reports of skill shortages and segregated departments that are slowing down the deployment of automation. But 5% of Australians said they hadn’t had any problems, which suggests that operational friction is starting to diminish as automation gets better and the focus switches to AI integration.
Compared to previous year, all regions report bigger budgets for cyber security automation. However, Australia has more new money this year, with 55% of respondents getting net new money compared to 49% of respondents worldwide.
Key performance indicators for automation are:
changing toward a new operational standard. There is a clear shift away from how it affects employee well-being and toward more measurable measurements. Australia puts a lot of emphasis on operational metrics like Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Respond (MTTR) as important measures of effectiveness. 60% and 58% of respondents said they used these as critical measurement criteria, compared to 56% and 54% globally. This shift shows that more and more organizations are focusing on performance results as they look for real, data-driven ways to optimize their investments in automation technologies.
Using AI in Cyber Security
This paper examines the principal reasons and factors influencing AI deployment. The data show that Australia is quite evenly split. Fifty percent of organizations want to implement AI to boost production (compared to 56% worldwide), while fifty percent want to do so to boost efficiency (compared to 44% worldwide). Thirty-six percent of Australian respondents said that the best uses for AI include helping with triage and action analysis with a person in the loop and threat research. Thirty-five percent want to employ AI for automated triage and analysis, which shows that they have a lot of faith in its benefits and accuracy.
Leon Ward, Chief Transformation Officer at Securonix, said, “Australian businesses are adopting AI-powered automation at an unprecedented rate, and the data shows that this change is no longer optional; it’s necessary.” “Even though we have strong support from leaders and more money, the real problem is getting things done.” Lack of skills, broken teams, and complicated world politics are still getting in the way of progress.
Executives are both pushing and stopping AI, which is a leadership paradox.
Respondents said that pressure from the board is the main thing that makes them work faster and more efficiently. Sixty percent of people say that their senior leadership team wants them to use AI to make things more efficient, and 68% say that their board wants them to use AI to make things more productive. But 31% of Australians also feel that getting management to agree is one of their biggest problems. This discrepancy shows that the strong focus on finding the competitive benefits of AI is being held back by ambiguity about how to deploy it in specific situations.
Things that stop AI from being used in cyber security
The main problems with using AI in cyber security are a lack of human skill, AI making wrong decisions, and problems with technology. These problems are similar to those encountered when automation is used. The biggest percentage of AI system failures (31%) comes from Australians. The most important thing for Australians when choosing international suppliers is the political impact (32%), followed by concerns about relying too much on AI or a single provider (31%), and finally ethical issues (29%).
Leon Ward said, “Australia is in a good position to lead the next phase of cyber security transformation because it has clear performance metrics and is becoming more mature.” “But it’s a fine line between being careful and being creative at the same time. Even so, there is no denying the excitement and energy in this area.
The study also looks at how cyber security automation and AI are being used in the three locations that were examined, as well as how they compare to each other and what their functions are.
About Securonix
Securonix is changing the way cyber security works with the first Unified Defense SIEM powered by agentic AI. This system is designed to make decisions and take action throughout the threat lifecycle using a human-in-the-loop approach. Our cloud-native technology is built for size, accuracy, and speed, and it lets multinational businesses go from reactive security to proactive, self-driving operations. Securonix is leading the way in the next generation of smart, self-driving security operations. It is a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for SIEM and a Customers’ Choice by Gartner Peer Insights.
