As AI continues to reshape cybersecurity, a provocative question is emerging: Will AI be the end of incident response as we know it?
In our recent webinar, industry leaders from TELUS, TAG Infosphere, and BreachRx explored how AI is influencing today’s incident response landscape — from the volume and complexity of incidents, to regulatory pressure, to where automation truly helps (and where it can hurt).
What became clear is that AI isn’t eliminating incident response, but it is forcing organizations to rethink how they prepare, operate, and make decisions when incidents occur.
Current Incident Response Trends: From Occasional Events to a Constant State
Incident response is no longer an occasional, high-impact event reserved for worst-case scenarios. For many organizations, it has become a persistent operational process — one that demands sustained readiness rather than episodic response.
Security leaders across industries are operating in a constant state of response, particularly in critical infrastructure, telecommunications, and high-tech environments. This shift fundamentally changes how organizations think about resilience, preparedness, and their ability to function effectively over time — not just during isolated crises.
When response becomes the norm rather than the exception, the challenge isn’t just stopping individual incidents — it’s building durable processes, teams, and decision-making structures that can hold up under continuous pressure.
AI Impact on the Attack Landscape: More Volume, More Complexity
AI is often framed as a force multiplier for defenders, but it is also reshaping the attack landscape at the same time. While intelligent automation can reduce noise and handle repetitive tasks, it’s also enabling an increase in the number of true incidents teams must investigate — and those incidents are rarely simple.
As routine threats are filtered out, what remains demands deeper analysis, stronger judgment, and more experienced responders. Entry-level roles don’t disappear, but their focus shifts, with frontline teams spending less time on repetitive triage and more time on understanding what happened in depth and why it actually matters.
The result isn’t fewer incidents — it’s a redistribution of effort, where human expertise is increasingly applied to higher-value, higher-risk decisions.
Regulatory Complexity & Operational Challenges: When Speed Becomes a Risk
AI introduces speed, but speed alone doesn’t guarantee better outcomes — especially in heavily regulated environments. Faster detection and response can amplify risk if organizations lack clear structure, ownership, and decision-making frameworks.
Without well-defined processes, automation can accelerate confusion just as easily as it accelerates response. Regulatory obligations, notification requirements, and cross-functional coordination all add layers of complexity that technology alone can’t resolve.
In this context, the real challenge isn’t how fast teams can act — it’s whether they can act deliberately, consistently, and with confidence under pressure.
AI Implementation in Defense: Where Automation Ends and Humans Still Matter
Despite rapid advances in AI, incident response remains a deeply human discipline. Automation can enhance analysis, surface insights, and streamline manual work, but it can’t fully replace judgment, accountability, or communication.
Decisions made during an incident have real consequences — for customers, regulators, employees, and leadership. Those decisions require context, experience, and the ability to connect across teams in moments of uncertainty.
The future of incident response isn’t human or AI — it’s the thoughtful integration of both, with technology supporting people rather than sidelining them.
What This Means for the Future of Incident Response
So, will AI be the end of incident response? The answer depends on how organizations choose to use it.
What the discussion makes clear is that AI is changing how incidents are detected, analyzed, and managed — but it isn’t removing the need for preparation, judgment, or coordination. It enables security teams to better apply their limited time and resources to harder problems. And, if anything, it raises the bar for how organizations approach incident response in practice.
The full on-demand webinar goes deeper into how these shifts are playing out across different environments, with practical insights on where AI is delivering real operational value, where it introduces new risk, and how teams are adapting their incident response programs as AI becomes more embedded in security workflows.
Watch the full on-demand webinar to hear the complete discussion, real-world examples, and expert perspectives on how AI is reshaping incident response today — and what that means for the future.