AI is changing cybersecurity roles, and entry-level jobs are at risk

Will humans remain essential in cybersecurity, or is AI set to take over? According to Wipro, many CISOs are leveraging AI to improve threat detection and response times and to build enhanced incident response capabilities.

What’s changing

AI systems can now perform a variety of tasks that were once handled by entry-level analysts, such as drafting reports, generating alerts, and assembling presentations for management.

By taking over these repetitive jobs, AI gives human professionals more time to focus on complex problems and big-picture strategy.

But this shift goes deeper than just task automation. It’s changing how security teams operate. Security platforms, including Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), and Network Traffic Analysis (NTA), use machine learning to analyze massive volumes of data in real time. They detect suspicious behavior, identify new types of attacks, and in many cases trigger automated responses. This helps organizations scale their defenses without hiring additional staff.

That’s why the analyst role is changing too. Instead of reviewing every alert manually, analysts now supervise how AI systems operate. They’re responsible for checking the quality of AI decisions, fine-tuning rules, and leading coordinated responses. This kind of work demands technical skills, plus good judgment and the ability to think critically.

AI also helps teams transition from reactive defense to proactive threat anticipation through continuous monitoring and predictive analytics. However, trust in AI’s autonomous capabilities remains limited. Exabeam reports that only 29% of cybersecurity teams trust AI to act independently, with just 10% of analysts sharing that confidence. Even among executives, only 38% feel comfortable letting AI operate autonomously in cyber defense.

Cybersecurity professionals who understand how to develop, tune, and leverage AI for threat detection, incident response automation, and data analysis will be in high demand. If you’re not learning to work with AI, you risk falling behind.

AI’s blind spots

Putting too much trust in AI can have serious drawbacks. While AI excels at spotting patterns in vast datasets, it lacks true understanding of context and human judgment. If the data AI systems are trained on is incomplete or biased, their outputs will reflect those limitations.

One major concern is AI hallucinations, where the system produces false alerts by incorrectly identifying vulnerabilities or misreading threat intelligence. This leads to unnecessary alarms that waste time, or worse, allows real threats to slip through unnoticed.

There’s also the risk of false confidence. When teams rely heavily on automation, they might think everything’s under control. That kind of trust can create blind spots, letting small issues turn into big security problems if no one is watching closely.

“LLM agents with excessive agency can undermine the fundamental principles of organizational security. For instance, an LLM with excessive autonomy or functionality may execute an unauthorized action due to unclear, manipulated, or adversarial inputs, impacting an organization’s integrity,” said Etay Maor, Chief Security Strategist at Cato Networks.

The path forward

We are still far from a time when AI can operate entirely on its own, and that is a good thing. Its purpose is to support people and streamline tasks, not to replace them. While AI will inevitably automate certain jobs, it lacks the critical thinking and creativity that define human decision-making. That means relying solely on AI models for your security is playing with fire.

Aaron Roberts, Director at Perspective Intelligence, noted, “I do think the power of AI is in being able to cut through the noise and provide you with the things that are likely the most relevant, but you still need the confidence and verification of a human to really understand the full context and potential impact of a recommendation or suggestion.”

For now, AI isn’t replacing jobs entirely, but it is transforming how the workforce will operate in the future.