How AI helps bad guys more and what we’re doing about it
Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora told CNBC on Tuesday that the emergence of artificial intelligence-enhanced cybercrime has made his job exponentially more difficult. “AI doesn’t help the good guys as much as it helps the bad guys, cause they have to be right once. We have to be right 100% of the time,” Arora said in a ” Squawk on the Street ” interview, the morning after the cybersecurity giant reported a strong quarter and saw its recently struggling stock bounce more than 3%. Hackers armed with AI are better able to penetrate clients’ systems, and do it faster and faster. Several years ago, if breaches did occur, cybersecurity firms had two to four days to fix the problems. Nowadays, remedies need to happen in as little as 25 minutes, Arora said. The rise of agentic AI, powerful artificial intelligence tools used to operate businesses more efficiently, has also created more points of vulnerability. “We are all hearing this narrative that there’s going to be more [virtual] agents than humans running around trying to help you manage your enterprise,” Arora said. This requires “a whole new art of securing these agents,” he added, given their access to every critical system that exists in a company’s systems. Arora said that thwarting these kinds of threats is best handled by Palo Alto’s platform, which puts all the protection needs for a client under one roof. In the past, companies were patching together products from dozens of cybersecurity vendors. In the 18 months or so since embarking on its one-stop shop strategy, Palo Alto ended its most recent quarter with 1,400 so-called platformization customers. That was up from 1,000 at this time last year. The company remains on track to meet its goal of 2,500 to 3,500 total platformizations by fiscal year 2030. Aiming to add products missing from its suite to get more business from existing and new customers was the driving force behind Palo Alto’s $25 billion offer to buy CyberArk — one of the largest identity security businesses in the world. Palo Alto doesn’t have identity, which will be key to securing the access of these AI agents, as well as regular human employees. At first, Wall Street expressed worries about the CyberArk deal premium, and whether it was needed because the core business was slowing, by crushing Palo Alto stock by more than 5% for three straight sessions — on July 29, when talks were first reported; the next day, when the deal was announced; and on July 31, the day after. Three more days of more modest selling brought the six-session losing streak to more than 17%. The stock was already on the mend when Monday evening’s earnings eased concerns about the CyberArk deal and proved that Palo Alto did, indeed, make the offer from a position of strength.
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