Machine vs. machine: Navigating AI cyber threats in ANZ

Frontier AI is enabling cyberattacks to be created and conducted at machine speed, while most organisations in Australia and New Zealand still rely on manual or mixed response processes, according to Elastic’s August 2026 survey of more than 850 IT and cybersecurity professionals. Although both countries are updating national cybersecurity frameworks, respondents reported gaps between compliance requirements and practical protection, with only 14% in either country able to respond to AI-automated attacks at machine speed and few able to detect compromises within five minutes outside business hours. Visibility is a central weakness, as 60% of Australian and 67% of New Zealand organisations identified unmonitored areas caused by legacy technology, skills shortages, and fragmented data across cloud, on-premises, and SaaS systems. AI adoption for cybersecurity is growing, particularly in New Zealand, but only about one-fifth of respondents believe their security data is sufficiently complete, searchable, and real-time for reliable AI-agent use. The findings also highlight increased executive accountability and staff stress, while recommending that organisations prioritize consolidated, open, model-agnostic data foundations and unified security platforms before deploying AI-driven automated defence.

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