TLDR: A recent 2025 IDC survey, commissioned by Fortinet, reveals that 82% of Singaporean organizations have already adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their cybersecurity operations. This widespread integration comes as 56% of these organizations faced AI-powered cyber threats in the past year, with many reporting a two-to-three-fold increase in attack volume. While AI is crucial for threat detection, incident response, and predictive modeling, full autonomous remediation remains rare, indicating a ‘co-pilot’ phase of AI adoption. The surge in AI use is also reshaping the cybersecurity workforce, driving demand for specialized AI security roles.
Singaporean enterprises are rapidly embracing Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their cybersecurity strategies, with a significant 82% already integrating AI into their security operations. This finding comes from a 2025 IDC survey, commissioned by global cybersecurity leader Fortinet, highlighting AI’s pivotal role in threat detection, incident response, and even broader recruitment and investment strategies.
The widespread adoption is a direct response to an increasingly sophisticated threat landscape. The survey revealed that 56% of Singaporean organizations encountered AI-powered cyber threats in the past year. Alarmingly, among those affected, 52% reported a two-fold increase in threat volume, while 42% experienced a three-fold surge. These advanced attacks often exploit vulnerabilities in visibility and governance, making them harder to detect and contain.
AI’s application in cybersecurity extends beyond basic detection. Organizations are now leveraging AI for automated response, predictive threat modeling, and behavioral analytics. Generative AI (GenAI) is also gaining traction for ‘light-touch’ functions such as updating detection rules, refining policies, detecting social engineering, and guiding investigations. However, despite these advancements, trust in full AI autonomy remains low, with auto-remediation still a rare practice. Most cybersecurity teams are currently operating in a ‘co-pilot’ phase of AI adoption, where human oversight is still critical.
This shift towards AI-driven security is profoundly impacting the cybersecurity workforce. The demand for specialized skills is on the rise, with the top five roles in Singapore including security data scientists, AI security engineers, and AI-specific incident response professionals. Organizations are not just acquiring AI tools but are actively building dedicated teams around these technologies to stay ahead of evolving threats.
Cybersecurity budgets are seeing cautious increases, with 86% of organizations reporting growth, though 68% of these increases were modest, less than 5%. Spending priorities are shifting towards high-impact areas such as identity security, Zero Trust frameworks, and cloud-native protection, moving away from traditional infrastructure-heavy investments towards more targeted, risk-centric approaches.
Despite the growing executive attention on cybersecurity, many teams remain understaffed and overwhelmed. Only 6% of the total workforce is allocated to internal IT, with a mere 13% of that dedicated to cybersecurity. Furthermore, less than 15% of organizations have a dedicated Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), and only 6% maintain purpose-built threat hunting teams. This lack of specialization contributes to burnout and reduced effectiveness.
To counter complexity, there’s a strong trend towards unified cybersecurity frameworks. A significant 96% of organizations are either converging security and networking or actively evaluating such integration. Additionally, 70% are considering vendor consolidation to achieve better integration, faster support, and an improved overall security posture.
Simon Piff, Research Vice-President at IDC Asia-Pacific, commented on this evolution: “Organisations are no longer experimenting with AI, they are embedding it across threat detection, incident response and team design. This signals a new era of security operations that is smarter, faster and more adaptive to the evolving risk landscape. AI is fundamentally reshaping how threats are identified, prioritised and acted upon. This evolution demands a parallel shift in strategy and talent.”
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Jess Ng, Country Manager, Singapore and Brunei, Fortinet, added: “CISOs across Singapore are entering a more advanced phase of cybersecurity planning – one where AI is not just augmenting defences but influencing how organisations structure teams, allocate budgets and prioritise threats. At Fortinet, we are helping customers embrace this shift by embedding AI across the platform, enabling faster detection, smarter responses, and more resilient operations as cyber risks become more complex and distributed.”
