Corporate Security Is Curious about AI, But Is It Useful Yet?

In 2025 you simply cannot do research on security trends without asking about artificial intelligence (AI). In a survey deployed by ASIS International’s Security Issues Research program on security trends, we asked several questions related to the use of AI and attitudes about the buzziest of topics that has emerged in the last couple of years.

The research, which was sponsored by Resolver, tucked the AI questions in at the end of the survey, so while more than 700 people took part in the survey, approximately 445 answered the AI questions geared at security professionals and 95 answered the AI question directed at security consultants. For the security professionals, this still yields an acceptable margin of error of ±5 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.

A final note about the survey itself: it was administered in late 2024 primarily to ASIS members and customers, and participant demographics were very similar to other ASIS Security Issues Research surveys.

The study took a broad interpretation of what constitutes artificial intelligence, which is in line with the public’s use of the term. The survey listed eight possible ways security might use AI, which included everything from using large language models such as ChatGPT to craft messaging to using facial recognition in access control. We asked security professionals if they used any of the AI tools in security and if they would like to learn more about each of the tools.

Overall, 57 percent said they had used at least one of the tools, leaving 43 percent who said they had not used AI in security. The bar chart below depicts the results of these questions—the green bar represents the percent who said they use AI in security in this way and the purple bar represents the percent who said they’d like to learn more about this AI capability.

Jean-Fernand Perenne, CPP, is the director of risk and security at VusionGroup, a data solutions provider for retail commerce based just outside of Paris. He says that being a technology company, his organization is heavily invested into AI, though that has not penetrated deeply into the security and risk planning functions yet.

“I’m staying alert and looking at what is out there,” he says. “When I see applications dealing with threat assessment, that’s what would be useful for me.”

He says using AI to assess supply chain threats, reputation threats, and being able to assess threats to executives are the types of things he’s looking for, though he has not yet seen the tools he thinks will be useful in these areas. “Something in those areas would be a nice first step for me. I think they are coming. Soon,” he says.

The 57 percent who had used AI in a security application were then asked if it was effective. One in five said it was too soon to tell, and four percent said AI had made no measurable impact. Forty-six percent said AI had been a helpful tool, with an enthusiastic nine percent saying AI far exceeded their expectations and a more subdued 21 percent saying AI had some marginal impacts.

When looking specifically at the benefits of using AI, half (51 percent) of security professionals who said they had used AI in a security application reported that AI had helped them create stronger ties to other departments.

Other benefits included automating incident response, expanding perimeter patrolling capacity, and allowing frontline security to spend less time patrolling—each of these benefits was cited by approximately one-third of those who had used AI. Less prevalent was AI leading to a decrease in overall security staffing (17 percent) or a reduction in frontline personnel allowing increases in other security personnel (14 percent).

Overall, security professionals think highly about the potential for AI: two-thirds said it was an important tool and they were eager to learn more as it develops, and most of the rest were even more enthusiastic, with 29 percent saying AI is transformative and they try to stay on top of the latest knowledge. Only four percent said they thought AI was overblown.

In a bit of irony, the consultants in the survey were both more optimistic and more pessimistic than security professionals. The consultants had four answer choices geared around AI’s potential and the timing of that potential, whereas the security professionals’ choices detailed above focused on AI’s potential and their interest in the topic.

Fully 46 percent of the consultants said AI already has or will completely revolutionize security within the next couple of years. Another 43 percent were more in the middle, saying AI could revolutionize security but it would take some time. Others said that AI would likely continue having incremental impacts. Among consultants, 11 percent thought AI and its potential were way overhyped.

Put Brendan Monahan, chair of ASIS’s Crisis Management and Business Continuity Community Steering Committee, in the camp of folks who think AI is about to take off.

“We’re adopting LLMs and copilots and other tools that are kind of widely available at enterprise scale,” he says. “Like everyone else, we're just trying to figure out how to make them make sense for us. But I think probably this year, and certainly next, we'll see more end-user, AI-driven security applications that are really meaningful. But I'm not convinced that we've seen a lot of that yet.”

He says security often has dominion over mountains of data.

“A few years ago, it really wasn’t all that valuable. But suddenly it may hold a lot of value,” Monahan says. “Our reports, our text, our video—all of these things can now be mined in ways that can present really interesting opportunities for us. So, I’m alert. But I’m not quite convinced on the end-user product side yet.”

The full report on the research findings, Understanding the Evolving Role of Security: 2025 Security Trends, sponsored by Resolver, is available on the ASIS website.

Scott Briscoe is the content development director at ASIS International. He led the security trends research project.