New Delhi [India] May 21 (ANI): A recent report from Splunk revealed that security teams are overwhelmed by tool maintenance, leaving them little time to focus on actual threats.

The 'State of Security 2025' report highlights the challenges security organisations face in today's complex threat landscape.

The report revealed that 46% of respondents spend more time maintaining security tools than defending against threats, while 66% of organisations experienced a data breach in the past year.

Only 11% of respondents have complete confidence in AI for critical security tasks, added the report.

'Human oversight remains central to effective cybersecurity, and AI is used to enhance human capabilities to help where it truly matters: defending the organisation,' said Michael Fanning, CISO at Splunk.

The report pointed to significant operational inefficiencies. For example, a majority (59%) cite tool maintenance as a primary drain, and 78% report their security tools are dispersed and disconnected, creating considerable challenges for 69%.

The above leads to wasted investigation time due to data management gaps (57%), alert fatigue (59%), and an excess of false positives (55%).

However, the report believes that Security Operations Centres (SOC) analysts are facing immense pressure. Over half report being overworked, and a similar number have considered leaving cybersecurity due to stress.

While wary of complete AI reliance, organisations recognise its potential. 59% of respondents have seen efficiency gains with AI, and 56% have prioritised its application to security workflows.

AI is currently used for threat intelligence analysis (33%), querying security data (31%), and policy creation (29%), according to the report.

The report highlighted the value of a unified security approach. Notably, 78% of respondents who share data with observability teams reported faster incident detection, and 66% noted quicker remediation.

The 'State of Security 2025' report emphasised the need for organisations to adopt connected security operations, integrating human expertise with AI advancements to combat the evolving threat landscape effectively. (ANI)