It’s clear that artificial intelligence has forever changed the landscape of cybersecurity. Every boardroom conversation now includes talk of AI-driven defenses, intelligent attack simulations, and automated threat response. AI is redefining how security teams operate, but it’s also reshaping the threat environment in ways that many organizations are still struggling to fully grasp.

A Look Back at 2025

We’ve seen astonishing growth in tools that claim to automate penetration testing end-to-end. Many vendors promise AI systems sophisticated enough to identify vulnerabilities faster and more comprehensively than any human could. This technology has undeniable value. Machine learning models can analyze codebases, scan infrastructure, and detect misconfigurations with great efficiency. They excel at pattern recognition, statistical analysis, and correlating subtle signals that would take analysts days to piece together manually.

AI alone, though, cannot deliver the depth of insight required to defend against modern threat actors. Real-world attacks are rarely just technical; they’re also psychological, social, and procedural. They exploit human trust, business processes, and the nuances of how teams interact with technology. A purely algorithmic system can’t think like a human adversary or anticipate the creative leaps that make advanced attacks successful. The highest-impact intrusions are still conceived and executed by intelligent, driven people, and defending against them requires human intuition to match.

An Eye on the Future

This is why I believe the future lies not in replacing human pentesters but in augmenting their work. At Raxis we are building AI-augmented penetration testing capabilities that combine the computational scale of artificial intelligence with the strategic thinking of seasoned professionals. Our expert pentesters are the thought-force behind the AI. They create detailed requests that guide AI tools to perform tasks that would be complicated and time-consuming for humans but are high-speed for AI. 

This partnership between human and machine transforms penetration testing from a periodic compliance exercise into a living, continuous defense discipline. AI amplifies our reach, allowing us to dive deeper, whether on traditional penetration tests or continuous PTaaS testing. Human expertise exposes the unpredictable: the novel, the contextual, the things adversaries invent on the fly. 

I see AI-augmented pentesting becoming the new baseline for effective cybersecurity. It frees our human talent to focus on creative, high-value work, which is precisely where they are most needed.

Looking Ahead to 2026

The cybersecurity battlefield is evolving fast but so is our ability to adapt. As we enter 2026 one principle remains timeless: technology may power the tools, but it’s humans who guide the mission. AI can enhance that mission in extraordinary ways but only when paired with experienced minds who understand what it means to think like an attacker and protect what matters most.

I hope you’ll join us for our new Augmented-AI series where the Raxis team discusses the creative ways we use AI to deliver more with each penetration test.