Eight industry executives comment on Worldwide AI Appreciation Day

Eight Industry Executives' Comments:

Gareth Cox, VP of Sales Asia Pacific and Japan, [Horizon3.ai](http://horizon3.ai/)

The boom in AI innovation and investments means cybersecurity needs to be at the forefront of business leaders' minds. It has introduced new risk surfaces, particularly with adversaries using AI to accelerate their efforts to steal data and IP, or leveraging AI to move quicker to compromise accounts for ransom. Organisations must also consider how their internal AI programs map to their company's data security policies, risk scoring, auditing, and regulatory compliance.

Cybercriminals are quickly adapting, exploiting vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and credentials with AI-driven tactics and techniques. These include attacks such as data poisoning, manipulation of machine learning models, or the use of AI to conduct highly sophisticated cyberattacks. In addition, integrating AI tools into hybrid architectures can lead to inconsistencies in security protocols if not carefully governed.

In the cybersecurity arena, AI has shifted the advantage to the attacker, enabling nefarious players to attack with unprecedented scale and speed. Organisations are now adapting by using cybersecurity vendors that provide production-safe AI to continuously test their controls. For defenders, it is time to fight AI with AI. Adopting a proactive, monitoring approach is critical for building trustworthy AI systems and avoiding future costly retrofits or compliance failures. At the same time, effectively communicating complex AI risks to business leaders and boards is essential. IT and cybersecurity risks, including those associated with AI, are no longer optional considerations—they are strategic imperatives.

Pieter Danhieux, Co-Founder and CEO, Secure Code Warrior

The challenges with AI implementation, constant updates, and the race for industry dominance are coming thick and fast, and security professionals are among the most affected by its vast risk profile. It's a fascinating, slightly terrifying time to be in the cybersecurity space, as we really have a two-pronged issue: AI coding tools contain inherent, predictable vulnerability fingerprints that can push insecure code to production at warp speed, and we have tools that can potentially revolutionise how we approach everything from penetration testing to reverse engineering insidious attacks and stopping them in their tracks. If there is one thing to truly appreciate in this era, it's how we can work together, as the tight-knit community we have always been, to create human-led, AI-augmented cyber innovation that is a force for positive change, safer software overall, and a whole new era for developers and security professionals alike to grow and apply their expertise where it matters most. It will take leaps and bounds in AI governance, oversight, and upskilling, but I remain excited for the sheer possibility in the space.

Tanya Bragin, VP of Product and Marketing, ClickHouse

Australian organisations shouldn't see AI as just another workload on top of their data platform. It substantially changes workload requirements across every existing use case. Applications are becoming agentic. Analytics interfaces are becoming conversational. Observability is moving from static dashboards to AI-driven investigation. The list goes on. In each case, the underlying data requirements converge on high concurrency, real-time query performance, full-fidelity data at scale, and cost-efficiency. Incumbent platforms weren't built for this. The platform choices Australian organisations make in the next few years will set the ceiling on everything that follows: how fast teams move, what products get built, what the business can see. Handling today's workloads is table stakes. The real test is what your AI applications will require.

John Cannava, CIO, Ping Identity

Organisations are increasingly deploying AI agents across the enterprise, and the opportunities for innovation and efficiency are tremendous. These systems are doing more than just responding to prompts. They’re making decisions, taking actions, and even spawning new agents with increasing autonomy and speed. That evolution is transforming how work gets done, and it’s also reshaping the security landscape.

Now the challenge is that many organisations are adopting AI agents faster than they can establish clear identity, accountability, and governance for them. When you can’t definitively answer what an agent did, why it did it, or under whose authority it acted, you create unnecessary risk and uncertainty. This is why identity for AI must become a foundational priority. Every agent needs a verifiable identity with clear permissions and continuous oversight, just like any human user or service account. By building trust, visibility, and accountability into AI from the start, organizations can unlock the full potential of autonomous AI while managing risk and strengthening security.

Ryan Rayner, Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer, iCXeed

AI Appreciation Day is a great moment to pause and recognise just how quickly AI has moved from “nice experiment” to critical business infrastructure. In customer experience especially, AI is now powering everything from intelligent routing and next‑best‑action to real‑time personalisation and proactive service. But for all the excitement about what AI can do, I think this day is also about appreciating how we use it—responsibly, securely, and in ways that genuinely improve people’s lives rather than just automate them.

Srinivas Gutta, Technical Practice Director, Adactin

As we recognise AI Appreciation Day, it is important to acknowledge the significant impact artificial intelligence is already having across industries, businesses, and our daily lives. While AI is still in its early stages of maturity, it has demonstrated its ability to improve efficiency, automate repetitive and mundane tasks, and enable people to focus on higher-value work that requires creativity, critical thinking, and human judgement.

From customer service and healthcare to education, government, and technology, AI is helping organisations operate more effectively and make better informed decisions. For individuals, AI-powered tools are simplifying everyday activities, saving time, and enhancing productivity.

AI Appreciation Day is not only an opportunity to celebrate the innovation and benefits that AI brings today, but also to recognise its immense potential for the future. As the technology continues to evolve, responsible adoption, ethical use, and human oversight will remain critical to ensuring AI delivers meaningful and sustainable value for society.

The journey of AI is only just beginning, and the opportunities ahead are both exciting and transformative.

Dan Winson, Founder, Zetifi

AI Day is a good reminder that the conversation has moved on. The question is no longer whether AI works, it's whether your data does. An agent is only as good as what it can reach, and how well it reflects the way your business actually operates. That's where citizen developers come in; the fleet controller, the service lead, the office manager, people who know the company's policies, are now the ones building these tools. They decide what to escalate, what to ignore, and turn a process that once depended on one person being available into something that runs reliably. The teams winning right now are not the ones with the cleverest model. They're the ones whose data actually does something."

Andrew Lai, Managing Director, Boab AI and SMEC AI

China’s national generative AI adoption rate hit 42.8 per cent in December 2025, up more than 25 percentage points in a year, and AI penetration in Chinese industrial enterprises jumped from under 10 per cent to 47.5 per cent in the same period. While Australian SMEs are understandably asking whether AI is safe, the businesses they compete with internationally are quietly compounding 20 and 30 per cent efficiency gains.

None of this means SMEs should leap into AI without thinking. The mistakes that come from rushing and buying tools without a use case are real and well-documented. But there is a meaningful difference between cautious adoption and no adoption at all.

The risk this country is running is not that it adopts AI too quickly. It is that we hesitate ourselves into irrelevance while the rest of the world keeps moving.

Australian small businesses do not need to fall in love with AI on 16 July. They just need to understand it, test it deliberately and find one place where it genuinely improves the work.