Artificial intelligence is changing the cybersecurity landscape in ways traditional higher education cybersecurity models weren’t built to handle. A campus attack surface can be complex, with decentralized IT structures, sprawling networks, and a host of sensitive student and research data that is attractive to cybercriminals. AI is raising the stakes, giving bad actors the ability to launch sophisticated attacks with less effort than before, while also giving IT teams new tools to fight back.
“We should be concerned about the increasing ability of AI as a technology to discover and exploit weaknesses,” says Buck Bell, director of CDW’s Global Security Strategy Office. “It’s incumbent now on security practitioners to leverage similar tools to find those weaknesses before the bad guys find them. But we also need to be able to measure risk more broadly.”
In CDW’s 2026 Cybersecurity Research Report, organizations across industries shared how they’re working to fight AI-powered attacks with AI-backed solutions.
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The Threats:
- 43% of respondents experienced AI-enhanced or AI-generated phishing attacks in the past year
- 37% faced AI-powered malware
- Top concerns are AI-generated phishing and social engineering (25%) and AI-powered automated attack tools (21%)
The Response:
- 41% plan to deploy AI-driven threat detection and behavioral analytics
- 49% are already using AI for threat and anomaly detection
- 47% are using AI for threat intelligence analysis
- 28% are maximizing security spending through automation, integration and consolidation
The Gaps:
- 31% use quantitative financial modeling to assess business impact, suggesting most organizations measure cybersecurity through technical metrics
- 46% say complex IT and cloud environments are their biggest challenge in quantifying cybersecurity risk
- 26% say 24/7 threat monitoring ranks as their biggest operational struggle — the top response — driving demand for managed security services
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