AI-First businesses are paying an ‘AI Speed Tax’ when recovering from cybersecurity incidents, according to report – Intelligent CISO
Publish Date: 2026-03-03 06:43:00
Source Domain: www.intelligentciso.com
Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points.
Fastly, a leader in global edge cloud platforms, has published the findings from its fourth annual Global Security Research Report. It reveals that AI-first businesses – those integrating AI into key processes and offerings from the outset rather than as a secondary enhancement – are paying an AI tax by failing to modernise security in step with AI’s rapid expansion across IT infrastructure. These businesses report taking nearly seven months on average to fully recover from cybersecurity incidents, 80 days longer than businesses that do not identify as AI-first.
The financial toll of a cybersecurity incident for AI-first businesses exceeds that of non-AI-first businesses by more than 135%. In fact, almost half (44%) of AI-first organisations claim that AI was directly exploited in their most recent security incident, compared to just 6% for non-AI-first organisations.
“The speed of AI adoption is reshaping security infrastructure almost overnight. For AI-first businesses, the priority isn’t to slow down innovation – it’s to modernise security at the same rate that AI is transforming their infrastructure,” said Marshall Erwin, CISO at Fastly.
AI scraping alone has become a material cost centre for nearly two-thirds (64%) of organisations, with average annual infrastructure impacts exceeding US$348,000.
“From unmonitored agentic activity to escalating scraping costs, the risks are real, operationally and commercially,” said Erwin.
