A recent Aon poll shows that EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) businesses believe they are unprepared for artificial intelligence (AI)-driven cyber threats, highlighting the opportunity to strengthen cyber resilience in the AI era.
A poll conducted during AON’s 2025 Network webinar gathered insights from 75 organizations across Europe, the Middle East and Africa on adapting to the rapid rise of artificial intelligence.
The survey results reveal a significant and growing gap: the adoption of AI is outpacing the development and maturity of the risk management frameworks required for its effective governance.
The results highlight that “while organizations are rapidly adopting generative and automated AI tools to improve efficiency, their risk management and governance functions are still catching up with ever-increasing scaling technologies,” making them vulnerable to attacks by sophisticated cybercriminals.
The survey showed that only 27.1% of respondents said their organizations were “prepared” to deal with emerging AI-related digital risks, while 65.4% felt “somewhat prepared” and 7.4% said they were “not prepared at all.”
Only 18.5% of organizations said they had updated their risk assessments to include AI-related risks, while 28.3% had not conducted any recent risk quantification. Another 51.8% measured general cyber exposure but did not focus specifically on artificial intelligence.
Only 32.1% of companies expressed confidence in their ability to manage artificial intelligence-related cyber threats, 50.6% said they had “some confidence”, and 4.8% said they had “no confidence.”
The report notes that many businesses “have yet to incorporate AI-specific risks into broader cyber and enterprise risk assessments, which directly contributes to low confidence levels in responding to AI-related incidents.”
Brent Rieth, head of global cyber at Aon, said: “Our survey shows that while organizations across EMEA recognize the importance of AI and cybersecurity, many are still in the early stages of readiness to deal with its impacts, and this gap could be dangerous for the business.
“They need to enhance threat modeling for AI, incorporate emerging risks into formal risk discussions and upskill their teams to enhance detection and response. Their risk strategies will need to evolve as the technology accelerates.”
David Molony, head of cyber solutions for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Aon, said: “We know that artificial intelligence is changing the way we operate and unlocking new efficiencies, but it is also increasing the sophistication of cybercriminals.
“Organizations must act quickly to embed AI technology-specific controls and modeling, otherwise risks will leave critical technology assets vulnerable and exposed. Organizations that proactively strengthen their AI risk management capabilities will be able to better protect their people, operations and reputations.”