Act Now or Pay Later: Coalition of Top Companies Tells World to Get Its Act Together on Cybersecurity

More than 100 companies including OpenAI, KPMG, Visa, Microsoft, and Citi signed an open letter Thursday warning that businesses and policymakers have “a limited window to strengthen cyber defenses” before the world’s IT systems are faced with “widespread and sophisticated” attacks enabled by artificial intelligence.

They called on every organization to “raise the security bar” and for governments to coordinate cyber defenses at the local, national and international level and provide essential services like hospitals and water utilities with access to defensive technology. 

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We’re no longer talking about a future problem. Researchers at IBM found that, from March 2025 to February 2026, 25% of data breaches involved AI-enabled attacks, a more than 50% increase from the previous 12-month period. In so many words, Thursday’s letter says if AI threats aren’t top of your bosses’ agenda, their priorities are wrong. You now have one more reason to needle them at the next all-hands meeting.

The letter advises companies to meet the threat of AI cyberattacks with “the urgency and coordination of an incident that takes precedence over everything except critical business operations.” The time to upgrade or replace security systems and add a mix of lower-cost and frontier defensive AI tools was yesterday. At least for investors, where there’s anxiety, there’s money to be made. And, as companies and governments mobilize to prevent the world from becoming a Harlan Ellison short story, cybersecurity executives are eating well:

• Shares in CrowdStrike and Okta surged 20% and 28%, respectively on Thursday, a day after both reported stellar earnings and raised their forecasts. Executives at both companies said cybersecurity spending is rising in step with artificial intelligence adoption.
• Palo Alto Networks, the world’s largest pure-play cybersecurity company, rose 12% Thursday. Shares in Palo Alto and CrowdStrike, the second largest in the sector, have both more than doubled in value in the last 12 months. Third-place Fortinet, which has also more than doubled in the last 12 months, rose 9.7% Thursday.

Cases in Point: Among the more prominent AI-enabled cyberattacks revealed this year was the breach of nine government agencies in Mexico by one single operator, a sophisticated act that researchers at Gambit Security said would normally have required a team. Earlier this week, OpenAI admitted that, when one of its AI agents broke free of controls and independently hacked the startup Hugging Face, the illicit activity went undetected for a week. After the incident, over 1,300 employees from major tech companies signed a letter in July asking the government to regulate the development of AI. Hugging Face, unsurprisingly, signed Thursday’s letter. It also agreed to be acquired for $12.9 billion by Nvidia, who presumably has a good IT guy or two.