GenAI Drives Shift To Preemptive Cybersecurity – BW Businessworld

Preemptive cybersecurity is set to become the dominant paradigm for enterprise defense as AI-enabled attacks accelerate. Research firm Gartner forecasts that by 2030, preemptive technologies will surpass traditional detection-and-response approaches, accounting for more than half of global IT security spending. That would mark a dramatic jump from less than 5 percent of spending in 2024 to 50 percent within six years, as organizations conclude that reactive models can’t keep pace with adversaries supercharged by generative AI.

From Reactive to Preemptive

Preemptive cybersecurity uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to anticipate, disrupt, and neutralize threats before they manifest. Rather than waiting for alerts and chasing incidents, these systems continuously sense, predict, and adjust defenses in real time. Core capabilities include:

• Predictive threat intelligence that forecasts attacker paths and prioritizes risk before exploitation.
• Advanced deception that misleads adversaries and collects telemetry without exposing real assets.
• Automated moving target defense that dynamically changes system surfaces, invalidating attacker reconnaissance.

“Preemptive cybersecurity will soon be the new gold standard across the global attack surface grid (GASG),” said Carl Manion, Managing Vice President at Gartner. “Detection and response alone won’t be enough to safeguard assets from AI-enabled attackers.”

The Risk Curve Is Steepening

Gartner cautions that organizations sticking to legacy, reactive security expose themselves to accelerating risk. The firm projects that documented Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) will exceed one million by 2030—a roughly 300 percent increase from about 277,000 in 2025—reflecting explosive growth in interconnected systems and the widening attack surface. As the GASG expands, attackers leverage automation and generative AI to find and weaponize weaknesses faster than human-led processes can respond.

Enter the Autonomous Cyber Immune System

At the center of Gartner’s vision is the Autonomous Cyber Immune System (ACIS), a decentralized, adaptive framework designed to defend the proliferating GASG. ACIS combines distributed intelligence with automated decisioning to detect environmental changes, predict threats, and autonomously reconfigure defenses.

“The relentless expansion and sophistication of the GASG renders reactive methods obsolete,” Manion said. “Though early in its development, the proactive and adaptive power of ACIS represents the future of digital defense.” Gartner characterizes ACIS as the ultimate evolution of preemptive cybersecurity—built to operate intelligently across interconnected systems without relying on centralized bottlenecks.

Specialization Trumps One-Size-Fits-All

Gartner also predicts a decisive move away from broad, monolithic platforms toward targeted, domain-specific solutions. These specialized tools will increasingly use agentic AI and domain-specific language models to solve precise industry challenges and environmental constraints. Expect to see tailored offerings for:

• Industry verticals such as healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing.
• Application environments including industrial control systems, cloud-native stacks, and AI/ML pipelines.
• Adversarial techniques ranging from ransomware on critical infrastructure to supply chain attacks on SaaS platforms.

This specialization will push vendors to collaborate more deeply. “No single vendor can effectively address the entirety of the GASG,” Manion noted. Gartner anticipates stronger technology alliances, joint go-to-market strategies, and standardization efforts—particularly around APIs and data formats—to ensure interoperability across diverse tools and datasets. For instance, a provider securing IoT devices in a hospital may need to integrate seamlessly with a platform protecting cloud-based electronic health records.

Implications for the Market

The rise of preemptive technologies is both a challenge and an opportunity. Demand for highly specialized, interoperable solutions opens the door for new entrants while enabling incumbents to redefine their portfolios around niche vulnerabilities and high-value use cases. Vendors that can demonstrate measurable risk reduction before exploitation—rather than faster containment after compromise—are likely to gain share.

For security leaders, Gartner’s message is clear: the balance of investment will shift toward anticipatory, autonomous, and adaptive controls. As AI-fueled threats scale, preemptive defense is set to become the default strategy rather than a complement to traditional detection and response.