India, July 26 -- Artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating cyberattacks by significantly reducing the time required to develop and deploy malicious tools, according to a recent Sophos AI Security 2026 Report. The report says cybercriminals are using AI to streamline existing attack techniques rather than invent entirely new ones, while increasingly targeting AI identities, OAuth tokens, APIs, and development infrastructure.

The findings are based on intelligence from Sophos X-Ops Managed Detection and Response (MDR), SophosLabs, the Sophos Counter Threat Unit (CTU), AI research, and telemetry collected across more than 625,000 customer environments worldwide.

John Peterson, Chief Technology Officer, Sophos, said attackers are using ...