Cybersecurity has become more critical than ever as the world rapidly embraces artificial intelligence (AI), according to officials at Palo Alto Networks.

At a media briefing on Tuesday, Palo Alto Networks Country Manager Bernadette Nacario said advances in frontier AI, while delivering significant benefits, are also creating new opportunities for cybercriminals.

"AI enabled attackers to discover vulnerabilities faster, automate exploit development, personalize phishing campaigns, and execute attacks at machine speed," said Palo Alto Networks Country Manager for the Philippines and Guam Alma Nacario.

"The economics of cybercrime have fundamentally changed, and obviously AI has a lot to do with this. Human-driven defense cannot keep pace with AI-powered attacks," she added.

Palo Alto Networks, a global cybersecurity company based in Santa Clara, California, protects organizations worldwide through AI-powered security platforms covering networks, cloud environments, and connected devices.

Its threat intelligence and incident response team, Unit 42, said frontier AI has sharply accelerated cyberattacks, particularly data exfiltration. Tasks that previously took several hours can now be completed in just over an hour.

"We're finding that in the top 25% of incidents we investigated over the past year, attackers are getting into networks within 72 minutes," said Unit 42 Vice President and Managing Partner for Japan and Asia Pacific Philippa Cogswell.

Rather than creating entirely new forms of cybercrime, AI is amplifying existing threats by generating highly convincing phishing emails, automating fraud campaigns, producing deepfake audio and video, analyzing stolen or publicly available data to identify targets, and rapidly creating disinformation.

Frontier AI refers to the most advanced artificial intelligence systems currently available, including models developed by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google's Gemini.

As these systems become more capable, AI developers have faced growing scrutiny over the potential misuse of their models by cybercriminals, as well as concerns surrounding their own cybersecurity practices. Critics have warned that increasingly autonomous AI systems could amplify hacking, espionage, and extortion campaigns, while raising concerns over data leaks, supply-chain vulnerabilities, and third-party security breaches.

Nacario said AI adoption has outpaced previous technological shifts.

"When we think about SaaS, it took about 15 years for enterprises to really adopt it. And for cloud, it took about a decade," she said.

"But generative AI reached global adoption in just three years, with more than one billion users. That level of adoption is unprecedented in technology history."

The rapid adoption of AI is also reflected in law enforcement data. In its 2025 Internet Crime Report, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) tracked AI-enabled cybercrime as a separate category for the first time, recording more than 22,000 complaints and nearly $893 million in reported losses. Cases involved deepfakes, voice cloning, and other AI-assisted fraud schemes.

Cogswell said organizations must respond by integrating AI into their own cybersecurity strategies to identify vulnerabilities, accelerate remediation, and reduce exposure to attacks.

"The idea is to understand how an organization is using AI and what it can leverage to prepare itself for an AI-driven attack landscape," she said.

Despite the risks, Nacario said AI remains a transformative technology whose benefits outweigh its challenges if deployed responsibly.

"The whole objective is not to slow down AI adoption. I don't think that is going to be possible. We need to embrace it, but ensure that innovation happens securely," she said.

"AI presents perhaps the greatest opportunity we've seen to simultaneously improve productivity, accelerate innovation, and strengthen cyber resilience."