Will AI replace Information Security Engineers?

Many of your tasks are within reach of AI. The role will change, so it pays to act now.

Task exposure to today's AI

55/100

High exposure

This is the occupation's typical task mix. Your own score can be up to 30 points higher or lower depending on how you work: routine share, people contact, judgment and how much you already use AI.

Get your personal score

Will AI replace Information Security Engineers?

Not entirely. Today's AI tools can take on about 55% of the typical work in this occupation, mostly: review security assessments for computing environments or check for compliance with cybersecurity standards and regulations. The parts that stay human include: Identify or implement solutions to information security problems.; Coordinate monitoring of networks or systems for security breaches or intrusions.; Troubleshoot security and network problems..

People who learn to use AI for the automatable parts keep the edge. The 3-phase plan below shows where to start.

Which tasks AI can take on

The largest tasks in this occupation, their share of the working week, and how much of each today's AI tools can do.

TaskAutomatable

Review security assessments for computing environments or check for compliance with cybersecurity standards and regulations. 68%

Identify or implement solutions to information security problems. 50%

Coordinate monitoring of networks or systems for security breaches or intrusions. 50%

Conduct investigations of information security breaches to identify vulnerabilities and evaluate the damage. 47%

Develop or install software, such as firewalls and data encryption programs, to protect sensitive information. 47%

Troubleshoot security and network problems. 45%

+ 14 more tasks (56% of the week) in the full test.

Your human edge

Identify or implement solutions to information security problems.
Coordinate monitoring of networks or systems for security breaches or intrusions.
Troubleshoot security and network problems.

AI tools to try

Coding assistants (GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor)ChatGPT / Claude for design and debuggingAI test and documentation generators

Related roles

Information Security Analysts
Penetration Testers
Network and Computer Systems Administrators

A 3-phase AI learning plan

Phase 1

Pair programming with AI

Use a coding assistant for boilerplate, tests and refactoring.
Give it context: project rules, examples, small steps.
Review AI code like a colleague's pull request.

Project

Use a coding assistant to build and refactor a firewall rule-testing script with unit tests, then review its output like a colleague's PR.

Phase 2

AI in your systems

Call an LLM API with structured output.
Retrieval over your own documents or data.
Evaluate quality, cost and latency before shipping.

Project

Build a retrieval system over anonymized past incident reports so an LLM API can suggest vulnerability fixes, and measure accuracy and latency.

Phase 3

Production-grade AI

Evals and regression tests for prompts.
Security: prompt injection, data leaks, permissions.
Monitoring and cost control.

Project

Create eval tests for a security-alert triage prompt, then add monitoring and guardrails against prompt injection before deploying it.

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