Artificial intelligence has changed the speed of innovation. Unfortunately, it has also transformed the speed of cybercrime. As organisations accelerate their digital ambitions, the threat landscape is no longer defined by isolated attacks or human led intrusions.
The new era of systemic cyber events is fundamentally different from the cyber risks businesses have prepared for over the past decade. The expansion of cloud dependency, the globalisation of vendor relationships and rapid integration of AI into core operations have created a risk ecosystem where one incident can echo through entire supply chains.
AI is rewriting the risk equation
The most notable shift is the emergence of AI empowered threat actors. These groups can use generative tools to accelerate network mapping, create realistic synthetic identities and automate attacks that previously required weeks of manual effort. Deepfake payment fraud is becoming one of the fastest growing areas of loss for organisations across mature markets. Executives who believe "I know the person on the screen" or "I recognise that voice" are quickly learning that visual and vocal authenticity can no longer be trusted as a security check.
AI is also intensifying the cost implications for clients. Companies are investing heavily in AI security frameworks, governance structures and continuous monitoring capabilities. They must review these frameworks far more frequently than traditional risk controls because threat vectors evolve at machine speed. This places significant pressure on balance sheets and IT teams who must learn, adapt and secure at the same pace as threat actors innovate.
Systemic vulnerability created by cloud concentration
The second major force reshaping risk is reliance on centralised cloud and software vendors. A single bad update or compromised vendor has the potential to disrupt global operations in a way that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Whether it is automotive platforms shutting down across an entire country or airlines globally halting operations due to one flawed software patch, organisations are discovering that their resilience is only as strong as the vendor ecosystem they rely on.
These events have forced insurers in developed markets to rethink aggregation exposure. Traditional underwriting models that rely on historic loss trends cannot capture the ripple effects of a single vendor failure that simultaneously impacts thousands of insureds. Insurers are therefore recalibrating pricing, capacity and modelling techniques with far greater emphasis on vendor dependency, cloud concentration and cross sector fallout.
Shifting from cybersecurity to security as a whole
Forward looking organisations are beginning to treat cyber not as a niche discipline but as a core component of enterprise security. The language has shifted from cybersecurity to operational security. Whether a company manufactures hardware, processes payments or stores data in multiple geographies, baseline cyber controls are becoming as essential as physical locks on a facility.
This reshaping of risk vocabulary reflects a larger shift. Cyber is no longer an IT matter. It is a board level, organisation wide conversation. Business leaders must evaluate systemic technology risk with the same seriousness as geopolitical or financial risk modelling.
What resilient organisations are doing today
Leading companies are taking decisive steps to protect themselves from the growing complexity of AI and vendor driven threats such as:
- Building multi layered authentication and synthetic identity validation processes
- Stress testing cloud locations using real time climate and risk modelling
- Auditing vendors not only for performance but for resilience, governance and territorial exposure
- Prioritising incident response rehearsals so teams can act quickly and confidently
- Treating cyber insurance as a balance sheet tool rather than a compliance checkbox
The shift to AI driven systemic risk is permanent. Organisations that recognise this early and adopt stronger, more intelligent risk frameworks will not only avoid operational disruption. They will become more competitive, trusted and resilient.
Gallagher continues to work with global insurers to refine coverage clarity, embed stronger controls and build forward looking risk strategies so that clients are protected not only from the threats they understand but also from the unknown risks emerging across the digital landscape.