HÀ NỘI — Only half of organisations in Việt Nam are fully confident they can detect and respond to a breach involving an AI system, highlighting cybersecurity preparedness gaps as AI-driven threats become more prevalent, according to a new Cisco report.

The Relentless Defense 2026 report found that 95 per cent of organisations in Việt Nam had experienced at least one cybersecurity incident affecting business operations in the past 12 months, above the global average of 91 per cent. More than 40 per cent of these incidents involved AI intervention.

The report assessed organisations on the comprehensiveness of their security coverage, the speed of threat detection and response, and operational barriers. Việt Nam scored an average of 65 out of 100, compared with 64 globally. Only 9 per cent of Vietnamese organisations qualified as 'Relentless Defenders', the highest-performing group, compared with 8 per cent worldwide.

“AI is changing how organisations respond to cybersecurity risks. As threats become increasingly AI-enabled and automated, technology is only part of the solution; operational agility determines how quickly organisations can respond,” said Nguyễn Như Dũng, general director of Cisco Việt Nam, Cambodia and Laos.

Organisations need to embed cybersecurity into their operations rather than treating it merely as a compliance requirement, while breaking down departmental barriers to speed up decision-making, he said.

Operational barriers hamper response

The report identified coordination, approval processes and data access as major obstacles to effective cybersecurity, involving not only security teams but also IT, procurement and senior management.

Globally, only 41 per cent of organisations said their cybersecurity and IT teams worked as a unified team, sharing data and tools. The figure was significantly higher in Việt Nam, at 80 per cent.

However, 35 per cent of Vietnamese organisations said their cybersecurity metrics were too technical to persuade senior management, while 51 per cent struggled to use business metrics to support decisions. Another 35 per cent lacked a consistent method for measuring security effectiveness.

Data access was also a challenge. Some 45 per cent of cybersecurity professionals in Việt Nam said they spent more time collecting and reconciling data across systems than addressing actual threats, while critical information was sometimes missed because it was held in inaccessible systems.

Globally, around 60 per cent of cybersecurity professionals identified organisational capabilities, including coordination, approval processes and data access, as areas with the greatest potential to improve cyber defence, rather than technology alone.

More than 80 per cent of cybersecurity professionals said AI had improved threat detection and response by at least 25 per cent, while more than 30 per cent reported significant reductions in operational workloads.

In Việt Nam, nearly half of organisations have widely deployed AI-powered security solutions, with network security recording the highest adoption. Incident investigation and response had the lowest adoption, despite AI's potential to reduce security teams' workloads.

Nearly 30 per cent of Vietnamese organisations have widely deployed AI agents in security operations. However, concerns over data leakage, regulatory compliance and AI governance continue to hamper adoption.

The report is based on an anonymous survey of 8,000 cybersecurity professionals across 30 markets conducted in April and May 2026. — BIZHUB/VNS