The National Association of State CIOs announced in December 2025 that a new priority has taken the top spot in its annual survey of issues concerning state CIOs across the country – artificial intelligence (AI), bumping cybersecurity to the second spot for the first time in a dozen years. But the connection between AI and cybersecurity is central to understanding the state of cyberspace.

During this virtual event, attendees:

• Understood how an agency can set priorities for using AI in cybersecurity, whether through monitoring for phishing, closing gaps and patching existing systems, or monitoring for malware that has been modified
• Outlined the steps in implementing AI-enabled tools that can work with existing cyber defenses
• Defined metrics that can measure the impact of using AI tools for cybersecurity
• Outlined the role of drones, sensors and AI to improve situational awareness for first responders, including GIS mapping to analyze hazard risks and affected populations
• Evaluated how their agency is using systems that provide two-way communications, especially alert systems with geo-targeting capabilities to reach affected areas
• Delineated steps to ensure operational readiness, by testing systems, training first responders, and updating protocols to meet federal, state, and local emergency regulations
• Evaluated the value of a unified dashboard that tracks spending across clouds and allocates costs to teams, projects, and applications
• Delineated the steps to implement automated shutdowns of non-critical environments during off-hours and delete unused resources such as unattached storage volumes or IP addresses
• Outlined methods for analyzing resource utilization and allocating underutilized storage and databases