The biggest threat to your security team may be your own organisation

An organisation that can’t coordinate a human response in a day will struggle to govern autonomous agents that act in seconds, says Cisco, with new research finding that the organisations best at defence do not rely on one strength – they combine broad coverage, fast response, and a team working as one without operational bottlenecks.

The company’s latest survey – Relentless Defense Report – which includes data from South Africa, examines how security practitioners are adapting to a threat landscape being reshaped by AI.

The report scored organisations on how completely they can protect their environment; how quickly they can detect, respond, remediate a threat, and what slows them down.

The global average score is 64 out of 100. In South Africa it is 68.

Only 8% globally qualified in the best performing group Cisco calls Relentless Defenders. This number was 9% in South Africa, suggesting that South Africa might be very slightly ahead of the global average of cyber preparedness.

Where security teams lose time

The report identifies organisational friction as a key barrier to stronger cyberdefence. But friction is not something security teams can solve alone. Ownership, approvals, and silos sit across IT, procurement, and executive leadership which is why they persist. And when teams can’t act as one, decision rights are unclear, and data is fragmented, deploying and governing AI becomes increasingly more complex.

Coordination: Only 41% of organisations globally and in South Africa say security, networking, and IT teams operate as one team with shared visibility and tooling.

• Executive influence:

  Globally, 43% say what they measure is too technical to persuade executives; 36% struggle to translate business metrics into information that can influence decision-making; and 27% have no consistent way to measure security performance at all.

• Data access:

  40% globally and in South Africa spend more time collecting and correlating data across systems than addressing the actual threat; and 39% (35% in South Africa) say critical insights are missed because data sits out of reach.

AI is making defenders faster, but security concerns delay adoption

More than eight in 10 practitioners (nearly nine out of 10 in South Africa) report that AI-powered security has improved their detection and response speed by at least 25% – and 26% globally (39% in South Africa) say AI is significantly reducing operational burden.

Yet fewer than half of organisations globally have extensively deployed AI-powered security capabilities, while in South Africa more than half have done so in cloud, data, network, and identity security.

Just one-third globally have extensively deployed AI agents in security operations – held back by concerns over data exposure, compromised systems, and third-party handling. Only 54% are very confident they could detect and respond to a compromised AI agent (though this number rises to 65% in South Africa).

“South African security teams have invested well in cybersecurity coverage and AI, and this shows in their scores,” says Smangele Nkosie, GM at Cisco South Africa. “But spotting a compromised AI agent only helps if security, network, and IT teams can respond together. In South Africa, 34% of organisations still coordinate their response manually – which won’t keep pace with AI agents that respond within seconds. Ownership and approvals are leadership decisions, and how quickly businesses settle them will determine how safely they can scale AI.”

What Relentless Defenders do differently

The report’s best performers, a group classified as Relentless Defenders, scored 80 or more out of 100.

They make up 8% of organisations globally and 9% of South African organisations. They are more likely to report stronger AI outcomes in security operations – not because they spend more, but because they lead across the organisational dimensions that enable security teams to act quickly:

• 83%

  operate as a single coordinated security team

  with shared visibility and tools across security, network, and infrastructure versus 37% of all other defenders.

• 86% apply consistent

  controls to AI agents

  and non-human identities versus 37%. And 77% are very confident they

  could detect and respond to a compromised AI agent

  versus 51%.

• 25% report

  AI helped improve threat-detection speed by more than

  100% versus 7%.

• Among organisations that increased security spending, the Relentless Defenders were

  nearly twice as likely to see incidents fall

  (71% versus 39%).

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