The rise of artificial intelligence presents both significant opportunities and unprecedented risks for businesses, governments, and consumers, according to officials from cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks.

Speaking at a media briefing on Thursday, Palo Alto Networks Philippines Country Manager Bernadette Nacario said AI is transforming not only how organizations operate but also how cybercriminals conduct attacks.

“AI is here, and obviously it's changing the way attackers are infiltrating businesses. So the question isn't whether AI changes cybersecurity — it fundamentally changes the rules of the game,” she said.

“[I]t's all happening across healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, education, government, telco[s]. So AI is redefining customer experience, operational efficiency, and innovation,” added Nacario.

The warning comes as digital fraud continues to rise. Global credit reporting agency TransUnion said the Philippines' suspected digital fraud rate reached 4.1 percent in 2025, above the global average of 3.8 percent. The firm also estimated that Filipino businesses lost about P4 trillion to various forms of digital financial fraud.

Palo Alto Networks' threat intelligence and incident response unit, Unit 42, reported that frontier AI technologies are enabling cybercriminals to accelerate attacks, particularly data exfiltration. Processes that previously took several hours can now be completed in just over an hour.

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

Cogswell said organizations must also leverage AI to assess vulnerabilities, remediate threats, and reduce their exposure to increasingly sophisticated attacks. She noted that speed has become a critical factor in cybersecurity as attackers use AI to automate and streamline their operations.

“The idea here is to understand how an organization is actually using AI and what it can leverage to get itself ready for an AI-driven attack world,” she said.

In its 2025 report, the FBI tracked AI-related cybercrime as a standalone category for the first time, recording more than 22,000 complaints linked to AI-enabled scams and cybercrime, with reported losses totaling about $893 million. The agency cited deepfakes, voice cloning, and other AI-powered fraud schemes that make scams more convincing and easier to scale.

Nacario said cybersecurity has evolved into a board-level concern as organizations grapple with the implications of AI-powered threats.

“Cybersecurity has become a leadership responsibility because it talks about business continuity, public trust, and even national resilience now. So the challenge is not whether we'll be targeted, it's whether we are prepared,” she said.

Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Palo Alto Networks is a cybersecurity company that provides cloud-based security, firewalls, and AI-driven threat prevention to thousands of organizations worldwide.