Why WEF Urges Finance Leaders to Close AI Cyber Gap

Financial services are falling behind in applying AI to cyber defence, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026, which it released ahead of its annual forum in Davos.

According to the WEF, only just over half of firms say they have implemented AI tools to automate security operations – lower adoption rates than manufacturing, supply chain and energy industries.

Given the volume of daily security events in banks, insurers and market infrastructures, weak automation heightens dwell times, cost to serve and loss exposure.

This comes as investor belief in AI usage remains high. Discussing the findings from the Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026, Christian Keller, Head of Economics Research at Barclays Investment Bank believes that, a "good" AI bubble would form, arguing that the growth of AI would fuel further boosts to technological innovation and the global economy. 

Digital currencies and systemic risk

The report, developed in collaboration with Accenture, flags decentralised finance, synthetic identities and AI‑driven fraud as rising threats as digital currencies scale.

In the report, WEF states: “By 2030, digital currencies are expected to play a growing role in daily economic activity, with broader adoption across retail payments, payroll systems and selected public and cross-border services.

“Cyberattacks targeting exchanges, wallets and smart-contract infrastructure have already caused multi-billion dollar losses, and by 2030 such incidents could have systemic consequences, triggering potential liquidity shocks or eroding confidence in national and corporate digital assets.

“As synthetic identities and AI-driven fraud evolve, real-time verification and resilience of settlement networks will define trust in the financial system."

Finance leaders should fund real‑time identity verification, strengthen treasury playbooks for tokenised liquidity shocks and stress test settlement dependencies spanning central‑bank digital currencies, custodians and smart contracts.

The WEF also highlights risks to financial transactions from disruption to land and satellite‑based networks, reinforcing the case for multi‑network redundancy and pre‑negotiated workarounds.

Paolo Dal Cin, Global Lead of Accenture Cybersecurity, says: "For C-suite leaders, the imperative is clear; they must pivot from traditional cyber protection to cyber defence powered by advanced and agentic AI to be resilient against AI-driven threat actors.

"True business resilience is built by fusing cyber strategy, operational continuity and foundational trust – enabling organisations to swiftly adapt to the dynamic threat landscape."

Supply chain visibility and concentration

According to the WEF, a lack of visibility across the digital supply chain is one of the top concerns in the financial landscape, followed by concentration risk – too much dependence on a small number of suppliers.

For CFOs, that translates into fragile unit economics when outages, legal penalties or vendor failures cascade through revenue, service and recovery budgets.

Practical steps to mitigate this include funding continuous vendor discovery to uncover shadow dependencies, aligning cyber risk tiers to contractual terms, enforcing exit strategies for critical services and setting concentration limits by category and geography. 

A robust is crucial, as aligning capital, incentives and accountability will determine whether financial services closes the AI cyber gap at the pace the level of risk demands.