No matter where you are, the jungle is only a few clicks away.
We're not talking about some distant land with harsh terrain and killer carnivores. This is the internet, where hackers of all stripes are always on the prowl.
"Watch any nature program and you’ll quickly discover what happens to animals that underestimate their adversaries," CrowdStrike (CRWD) said in its 2025 Global Threat Report. "They become prey."
"The same principle applies in cybersecurity — the adversary is advancing so fast that you can’t afford to underestimate them," the report added.
"Our latest research demonstrates that adversaries are becoming more efficient, focused, and businesslike in their approach — in many ways, more like the enterprise organizations they prey upon."
George Kurtz, co-founder and CEO of Crowdstrike. The company is a key cybersecurity pick at investment firm Wedbush. Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesBloomberg/Getty Images
The CrowdStrike study said that adversaries across all major categories — nation-state, eCrime and hacktivist —have become early and avid adopters of generative AI, which creates new content like text, images, audio and video, using deep learning to learn patterns and generate new data.
CrowdStrike warns that hackers are using AI
"The 'force multiplier' impact of off-the-shelf chatbots has made [generative artificial intelligence] a popular addition to the global hacker toolbox," the study said.
The report warned that easy access to commercial large language models, advance AI systems, is making the bad guys more productive. LLMs shorten their learning curves and development cycles and enable hackers to increase the scale and pace of their nefarious activities.
CrowdStrike is a one of handful of companies that Wedbush analysts listed in a May 11 research report that declared "the Golden Age of cybersecurity is here."
In addition to CrowdStrike, the firm said its top cybersecurity stocks for the rest of the year are Palo Alto Networks (PANW) , Zscaler (ZS) , CyberArk (CYBR) , and Check Point Software (CHKP) .
The report said that AI was making attacks more complex and sophisticated, leaving many organizations exposed to these emerging threats. Some 87% of security professionals reported some form of AI-driven cyberattack in 2024.
"A very inexperienced hacker utilizing AI is more effective than the most seasoned and well-trained hacker not using AI, making the threat level for the consumer/enterprise continue to increase and reaffirming the high priority of cybersecurity," Wedbush said.
To address the more sophisticated breaches organizations now face, more cybersecurity companies are doubling down on their AI initiatives to meet rising demand for best-in-class cybersolutions across the cloud, networks, endpoints, applications, and the internet of things, Wedbush said.
"Cybercriminals are weaponizing AI to evade detection and manipulate victims, which means organizations must leverage equally advanced AI-powered defenses to outpace these emerging threat," said Deepen Desai, Zscaler’s chief security officer and head of security research. He made the remarks last month when the company released its 2025 Phishing Report.
Wedbush says cybersecurity could be 'outperformer'
Wedbush warned about the introduction of Agentic AI, which describes systems that can autonomously make decisions and take actions to achieve goals with minimal human intervention.
Agentic AI further accelerates the AI market, "and in turn the scale and scope of these cyberattacks expands with many organizations embedding these capabilities into critical systems without necessary safeguards, further elevating the threat landscape," the firm said.
"We believe [Wall Street] is underestimating the growth impact and positive ripple effect on the cybersecurity industry from AI-use cases exploding and the proliferation of more data in the cloud exposed to a myriad of endpoints," the firm said."
CrowdStrike, which got hammered last year after a faulty update to its software triggered a worldwide IT shutdown, said on May 7 that it would cut 5% of its workforce, due in part to “AI efficiency.”
Chief Executive George Kurtz said AI “flattens our hiring curve and helps us innovate from idea to product faster,” adding that it “drives efficiencies across both the front and back office,” according to The Guardian.
Meanwhile, Deloitte recently said it was expanding its S2S AI Factory as a Service to include advanced cybersecurity from Palo Alto Networks, which is scheduled to report earnings on May 20.
“Organizations are contending with many barriers to widespread AI adoption, including security, safety and even performance,” Kieran Norton, US cyber AI and automation leader at Deloitte & Touche, said in a statement. “These cyber capabilities and solutions can aid in effectively navigating these challenges while securely implementing AI.”
Wedbush said the AI software era is now and "cybersecurity names should be a major beneficiary over the coming year."
"We are seeing a very resilient spending environment for cybersecurity in the field and this remains a subsector that could be a major outperformer over the rest of 2025," the investment firm said.
