Business Case Studies & Business Publications

Cybersecurity in the Post-AI Era

Cowan, Alex;Mitche...

Technical Note

Cybersecurity in the Post-AI Era

Cowan, Alex; Mitchell, Dave

OM-1844 | Published November 6, 2025 | 21 Pages Technical Note

Collection: Darden School of Business

Product Details

Cybersecurity (or just security, as it’s called in tech and as we call it in this note) is no longer a niche responsibility managers can hand off—it’s become a core, strategic function in every company. Once business and communication moved almost entirely online, the stakes went way up. Now, with AI accelerating the pace of both attacks and defenses, the classic cat-and-mouse game of security engineers versus threat actors has turned into a high-speed chase. This technical note provides managers with a practical framework for understanding cybersecurity. It explains the adversarial nature of cybersecurity and introduces complementary patterns for understanding how attackers identify vulnerabilities, gain access, establish themselves, and exploit systems, and how defenders identify risks, improve observability, intervene, respond, and adapt. The note then examines cybersecurity across behavioral, application, and infrastructure layers, with particular attention to AI-related risks and capabilities, including automated reconnaissance, deepfake-enabled social engineering, AI-assisted vulnerability discovery, security operations, prompt injection, AI-agent permissions, and software supply-chain vulnerabilities. Throughout, the note emphasizes that cybersecurity is not solely the responsibility of specialists but an organization-wide managerial responsibility requiring consistent processes, automation, observability, rapid response, and continuous learning.