We met with 68 defense and intelligence leaders to understand their top priorities and how they are preparing for and adapting to key trends shaping their organizations. This year, the sector is prioritizing:
- Protecting through cybersecurity to safeguard digital assets and mitigate cyber threats
- Accelerating artificial intelligence to enhance threat detection and response capabilities
- Advancing IT modernization and cloud solutions to enable greater innovation
AI ambitions require more holistic data strategies.
42%cite AI as the top innovation priority over the next 3 years70%are exploring GenAI and 76% are exploring traditional AI94%cite data management and quality as top improvement initiatives
- Digital demands rise
70% cite high impacts of technology and digital acceleration, triggering the need for AI and other technology enablers, and better data management (up 5pp year-over-year).- Talent hiring challenges persist
80% indicate continued difficulty hiring IT talent with defense subject matter expertise.- Ecosystem collaboration grows in importance
52% cite high impacts of supply chain reconfiguration, aligned with the need for closer collaboration between defense, industry and society to ensure resilience.
As defense and intelligence organizations continue to strengthen their cybersecurity programs, they rank the importance of key program elements as follows:
Cybersecurity governance
Cyber incident response
Information security services
1 |
Optimize warfare readiness through proven and innovation solutions and subject matter expertise. |
2 |
Embrace partnerships to capture more talent and innovation to operate with speed, precision and range. |
3 |
Converge AI with cybersecurity to enhance threat detection, response capabilities, and overall resilience. |
4 |
Promote joint digital solutions across air, land, sea, cyber and space domains. |
5 |
Take a holistic approach to data-driven defense to improve data management and quality. |
