A defence is only as good as the threat picture it is built against: drawn from headlines, it buys the wrong controls; drawn from last year's assumptions, it is too slow. This chapter gives the defender's picture of what AI changes for attackers, based on what was observed in 2025 and 2026 rather than on forecasts, and translates it into requirements for each Function of NIST CSF 2.0. It is the threat picture behind the "thwarting AI-enabled attacks" focus area throughout the book.
In CSF terms the chapter is responsible for ID.RA Risk Assessment, whose outcome is that the cybersecurity risk to the organisation, its assets and its people is understood (19, NIST, 2024). Four Subcategories carry the weight: threat intelligence is received from sharing forums and sources (ID.RA-02), threats are identified and recorded (ID.RA-03), their potential impacts and likelihoods are recorded (ID.RA-04), and all of these inform the prioritisation of risk responses (ID.RA-05). The chapter treats the Category through the three focus areas of the NIST Cyber AI Profile (20, NIST, 2025), and supplies the threat content that Chapter 10 makes continuous.
Within two years the reporting moved from AI as a productivity aid for attackers to AI that executes large parts of an intrusion.
Primary topics explored
- From misuse reports to agentic offensive frameworks
- The kill chain under acceleration
- The exploitation window
- Attacks on AI systems
- Separating evidence from forecast
- From threat picture to requirements per Function
About AI Red Team
AI Red Team is Book 4 of The Transformed Architecture. It shows how large European enterprises and public authorities put artificial intelligence to work as an active part of cyber defence: AI-assisted red teaming and adversary emulation, red teaming of AI systems themselves, the AI-assisted security operations centre, detection engineering, threat intelligence, incident response and purple teaming, all under a lawful mandate and with evidence a supervisor can inspect.
It builds on the conclusions of Architecture as Code, AI Governance and AI Platform and Security.
CISOs, SOC leads, red and blue team practitioners, security architects, AI architects and technical decision-makers.
Gunnar Nordqvist
Conceived, directed and published the books of The Transformed Architecture.
Continue with the full chapter
Chapter 2: The Threat Landscape When Attackers Use AI in AI Red Team gives the detailed explanations, practical examples and implementation patterns behind this summary.
This whitepaper belongs to “Foundations” and is one of 32 drawn from the manuscript.