Only 59% of organizations in the Philippines are very confident they can detect and respond to a compromised artificial intelligence (AI) agent, as cybersecurity teams face challenges in coordinating responses and accessing critical data, according to a Cisco report released on October 19.
The “Relentless Defense Report” found that 93% of organizations in the Philippines experienced a material, business-disrupting cyber incident in the past 12 months, with nearly half involved in an AI-enhanced attack.
Despite the growing use of AI in cybersecurity, organizations continue to face operational challenges that can delay threat detection and response.
Only 41% of organizations surveyed in the Philippines said their security, networking, and IT teams operate as a single team with shared visibility and tools.
Data access is another problem. About 32% of respondents said they spend more time collecting and correlating data across systems than addressing threats, while 37% said critical insights are missed because data remains inaccessible.
The report also found that 53% of respondents said their security metrics are too technical to persuade executives, while 28% struggle to translate business metrics into information that can influence decisions. Another 13% have no consistent way to measure security performance.
“AI has fundamentally raised the stakes for cyber defense. In a post-Mythos era, the speed of defense is driven by operational agility, not technology alone. The organizations that stay ahead will be those that embed security into how they operate, treat it as more than a compliance exercise, and break down operational silos so the right people can make the right decisions at the right time,” said Zaza Soriano-Nicart, managing director of Cisco Philippines.
More than nine in 10 Filipino security practitioners reported improvements of at least 25% in threat detection and response through AI, while more than one-third said the technology significantly reduced their operational workload.
More than half of organizations have extensively deployed AI-powered security capabilities, but adoption remains lower in security operations for investigation, where AI could help reduce the workload of security teams.
Only 42% have extensively deployed AI agents in security operations. Concerns about data exposure, compromised systems, and third-party handling continue to limit adoption.
The report also found that 17% of organizations in the Philippines belong to Cisco’s top-performing category, called Relentless Defenders, compared with 8% globally. The average score for Philippine organizations was 70 out of 100.
Globally, these top-performing organizations were more likely to have coordinated security teams and consistent controls for AI agents and non-human identities.
Among organizations that increased security spending, 71% of the Relentless Defenders reported a decline in security incidents, compared with 39% of other organizations globally.
The report was based on a double-blind survey of 8,000 security professionals across 30 markets, conducted in April and May 2026. It assessed organizations based on security coverage, response speed, and operational friction.
