As IT and OT groups work extra carefully collectively, cyber dangers turn into extra seen, not smaller—a vital step towards constructing resilient, AI-ready industrial environments, Cisco said. But right now, solely 20% of organizations report totally collaborative IT/OT interworking on cybersecurity, the report states.
The 2026 report additionally reveals how shortly AI has turn into the primary matter of dialog amongst industrial networking groups. For instance, the survey discovered 61% of respondents are actively deploying AI in industrial environments, and solely 20% report mature, scaled adoption. Apparently, in its 2024 report, Cisco discovered {that a} scarcity of expert employees was the primary problem going through AI adoption. That problem has fallen to 3rd place in 2026, with AI expertise integration capturing the second slot.
Another insights from the Cisco analysis embrace:
- 51% of respondents anticipate important will increase in connectivity and reliability necessities, whereas 96% say wi-fi networking reliability is essential to enabling industrial AI—making it foundational to community readiness at scale.
- Higher edge compute capability (44%), bandwidth (42%), and mobility (40%) are prime community necessities for AI at scale.
- AI workloads introduce new efficiency, energy, and reliability necessities that exceed conventional industrial community design assumptions. Amongst respondents, 97% anticipate AI workloads to have an effect on their industrial networks.
- Scaling AI requires shifting from human-in-the-loop workflows to machine-to-machine decisioning— driving funding in connectivity, edge, and information infrastructure.
- Efficient collaboration between IT and OT groups straight impacts AI outcomes. However 43% proceed to function with restricted or no IT/ OT cooperation. Disparate groups sluggish AI deployment and enhance operational threat, whereas IT/OT alignment accelerates scalability, stability, and safety.
IBM’s X Drive safety outfit lately wrote that AI is now not an rising idea in cybersecurity: “It’s a drive multiplier actively utilized by each defenders and adversaries. Menace actors are already making use of generative AI to scale phishing operations, speed up malicious code growth and improve social engineering by way of improved language high quality and realism. On the similar time, defenders are utilizing AI-driven analytics to course of huge volumes of telemetry, determine anomalous conduct and shorten detection and response timelines.”
