Security leaders have already decided that AI is worth buying. They have not decided it’s worth trusting. In Arctic Wolf’s 2026 AI & Cybersecurity Trends Report, 94% of respondents said AI capabilities now factor into their security buying decisions, and 51% said they won’t buy a product without them. Ask those same leaders how much they’d let AI do inside their own environment, though, and the answers get a lot more cautious. Only 14% have made AI central to their security operations strategy. That caution has some basis. In the 2026 SANS AI in Cybersecurity Survey, nearly two-thirds of security professionals said they’d received AI-generated guidance that later turned out to be wrong. Buyers want AI in their tools, but most aren’t ready to trust it with their environment.
The Gartner® 2026 Hype Cycle™ for Agentic AI puts AI SOC agents at the Peak of Inflated Expectations, with mainstream adoption still two to five years out.1 Gartner also predicts that “By 2027, over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled due to escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls.”2 Attackers aren’t hesitating the same way.
