Page 89 - Cyber Defense eMagazine September 2025

AI is the New Attack Surface

What CISOs Must Know

By Patrick M. Hayes, Author & Security Strategist, Integrated Assurance LLC

AI is no longer a technical experiment operating on the fringes of business operations. AI is now part of
core business workflows, decision-making processes, customer experiences, and major strategic efforts
across almost every industry. Its strength lies in how it learns, adapts, and scales with ease. But those
same strengths also create new risks that most conventional security and governance approaches simply
aren’t built to handle.

As organizations rush to capitalize on advantages of AI, they typically underestimate the breadth and
depth of the threat surface it creates. AI may be a powerful tool for innovation, but it’s also a new vector
for exploitation, failure, and regulatory exposure. The systems we are integrating into our businesses can
behave in ways that are difficult to predict, harder to control, and nearly impossible to explain once they
go wrong.

The time has come for enterprise security leaders to reposition themselves as enablers of trust at scale
and not just risk mitigators. This shift demands a new approach. It requires Integrated Assurance, a model
that treats security as a continuous and embedded discipline, aligned with innovation, not opposed to it.
This article outlines the key dimensions of AI as a threat vector and presents a practical path forward for
enterprises committed to building responsibly in an AI-powered world.

Cyber Defense eMagazine – September 2025 Edition 89
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