India, Sep 30: An organization that can't coordinate a human response in a day will struggle to govern autonomous agents that act in seconds. New research from Cisco, which builds the critical infrastructure for the AI era, finds that the organizations best at defense do not rely on one strength. They combine broad coverage, fast response and a team working as one, without operational bottlenecks.
The Relentless Defense Report examines how security practitioners are adapting to a threat landscape being reshaped by AI. The report scored organizations on how completely they can protect their environment; how quickly they can detect, respond, remediate a threat, and what slows them down. The global average score is 64 out of 100. In India, it is 66. Only 8% globally qualified in the best performing group, Cisco calls Relentless Defenders. In India, they also make up 8%.
Where security teams lose time
The report identifies organizational friction as a key barrier to stronger cyber defense. But friction is not something security teams can solve alone. Ownership, approvals and silos sit across IT, procurement and executive leadership, which is why they persist. And when teams can’t act as one, decision rights are unclear and data is fragmented, deploying and governing AI becomes increasingly more complex.
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Coordination: Only 41% of organizations globally (40% in India) say security, networking and IT teams operate as one team with shared visibility and tooling.
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Executive influence: 43% of organizations globally (49% in India) say what they measure is too technical to persuade executives, 36% of organizations globally (34% in India) struggle to translate business metrics into information that can influence decision making, and 27% of organizations globally (26% in India) have no consistent way to measure security performance at all.
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Data access: 40% of organizations globally (44% in India) spend more time collecting and correlating data across systems than addressing the actual threat, and 39% of organizations globally (43% in India) say critical insights are missed because data sits out of reach.
AI is making defenders faster, but security concerns delay adoption
More than eight in ten practitioners globally report detection and response gains of at least 25%, and more than one in four globally (nearly one in three in India) say it is significantly reducing operational burden.
Yet fewer than half of organizations have extensively deployed AI-powered security capabilities. Adoption is highest in network security and lowest in security operations and investigation — the areas where AI could most directly reduce the burden on security teams. Just one-third globally have extensively deployed AI agents in security operations. They are held back by concerns over data exposure, compromised systems and third-party handling. Only 54% globallyare very confident they could detect and respond to a compromised AI agent.
What Relentless Defenders do differently
Relentless Defenders do more to reduce friction and control the AI they are developing. They are also more likely to report stronger AI outcomes in security operations — not because they spend more, but because they lead across the organizational dimensions that enable security teams to act quickly:
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83% operate as a single coordinated security team with shared visibility and tools across security, network and infrastructure, versus 37% of all other defenders.
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86% apply consistent controls to AI agents and non-human identities, versus 37%. 77% are very confident they could detect and respond to a compromised AI agent, versus 51%
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25% report AI helped improve threat-detection speed by more than 100%, versus 7%.
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Among organizations that increased security spending, the Relentless Defenders were nearly twice as likely to see incidents fall (71% vs. 39%).
