While artificial intelligence (AI) is seeing widespread adoption across Vietnam, only 50% of domestic organizations express full confidence in their ability to detect and counter security breaches targeting AI systems.
The findings were recently published in Cisco's newly released Relentless Defense 2026 report, which assesses how cybersecurity professionals are navigating an increasingly AI-driven threat environment.
The benchmark assesses organizations across three pillars: the comprehensiveness of their IT environment defense; the speed of threat detection, response, and remediation; and the operational friction that delays these processes.
Vietnam scored 65 out of 100 on the defense index, slightly edging out the global average of 64.
However, only 8% of organizations globally and 9% in Vietnam qualified as "Relentless Defenders"—an elite tier distinguished by comprehensive security posture, rapid incident response, and minimal operational bottlenecks.
Mr. Nguyen Nhu Dung, Managing Director of Cisco Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, noted that AI is fundamentally altering how organizations address cyber risks. As threat actors deploy automated, AI-assisted vectors, technology alone is insufficient; operational agility dictates the ultimate speed of defense.
"Organizations must embed cybersecurity directly into their operating fabric rather than treating it merely as a compliance checklist. Concurrently, operational silos between departments must be eliminated to enable swift, decisive decision-making," Mr. Dung said.
The report identifies operational friction as the primary impediment to cyber defense capabilities. This friction does not stem solely from security personnel, but from procurement, IT operations, and leadership sign-off workflows.
Cross-departmental misalignment, ambiguous decision-making mandates, and fragmented datasets also add complexity to AI governance and deployment.
In terms of cross-functional alignment, only 41% of organizations globally report close integration—sharing tools and unified data—between IT and cybersecurity teams. Meanwhile, that figure in Vietnam is substantially higher, reaching 80%.
AI adoption continues to gather pace across the country, with nearly half of surveyed organizations having broadly deployed AI-enabled security tools.
Adoption is most prevalent in network security, while the lowest rates occur in incident investigation and remediation—an area where AI could significantly alleviate workloads for security teams. Furthermore, nearly 30% of organizations have widely deployed AI agents across security operations.
Nevertheless, AI integration faces headwinds from data privacy concerns, regulatory compliance demands, and governance hurdles. Notably, only 50% of surveyed organizations in Vietnam feel completely confident in their capability to detect and respond to compromised AI systems.
Google translate