Why In News?
The global cyber landscape shifts from static Generative AI toward Agentic AI, creating a "double helix" of security risks that bypasses traditional Zero Trust protocols.
What is the AI–Cyber Nexus?
The Double Helix Concept: AI acts as a force multiplier for both cyber defence and cyber offence by enabling autonomous threat detection, malware evolution and machine-speed attacks, while also lowering entry barriers for cybercriminals.
AI in Cybersecurity: AI automates threat intelligence, malware analysis, vulnerability assessment, code auditing and Security Operations Centre (SOC) functions.
Novel Vulnerabilities: AI systems are susceptible to prompt injection, data poisoning, model inversion, hallucinations, sensitive information disclosure and supply-chain attacks.
Autonomous AI Agents: Unlike Generative AI, Agentic AI can independently plan, execute and coordinate multi-step tasks, making compromise of a single agent capable of cascading across connected systems.
Dual-Use Technology: The same AI tools that strengthen cyber defence can also be weaponised for malware generation, automated reconnaissance, phishing and cyber espionage, requiring a risk-based governance approach.