Please enjoy this Op-Ed contribution Ana Butter, a senior executive at Assaia, which optimizes aircraft turnarounds with AI and computer vision.

More than 40 years ago, the Internet was largely the domain of researchers, academics, and government institutions. Few could have predicted how deeply it would become embedded in everyday life, transforming how we communicate, work, travel, do business, and surface information.

The web created incredible opportunities. In fact, its evolution is one of the most rapid and disruptive technological transformations in human history.

In the 1980s, people were unaware that a technology used by researchers and academics would eventually underpin banking, healthcare, transport, government services, and global commerce. Yet within a few decades, the Internet had become critical infrastructure. AI is now on a similar trajectory.

There is a common challenge when revolutionary technologies emerge. We tend to evaluate them through the lens of today’s capabilities rather than tomorrow’s potential, whether that be good or bad.

As digital connectivity expanded, so did our reliance on it. In many cases, adoption and innovation moved faster than the security models designed to protect them.

This context is particularly poignant ahead of 2026’s ACI Europe General Assembly, and in light of a recent warning issued by its Director General, Olivier Jankovec, about new “Mythos”-class artificial intelligence capabilities; these AI systems are able to autonomously identify and exploit vulnerabilities at unprecedented speed and scale.

Like the early Internet, AI is already creating significant opportunities across society and industry. The challenge is that its long-term implications are still unfolding.

Let me explain.

A double-edged sword

Few organizations today would question the value AI can offer. Across aviation, it is helping improve efficiency, automate routine processes, and support more informed decision-making. Alongside this, airports, airlines, and technology providers already know AI is being used by attackers to identify vulnerabilities and generate sophisticated phishing campaigns.

The risk is that AI is evolving so quickly that its future capabilities, and their cybersecurity implications, remain difficult to predict fully. This raises an important question: are today’s standards sufficient for tomorrow’s threats?

Perhaps not yet. Many of today’s safeguards were developed for a different threat environment, and as AI continues to reshape cyber risk, ensuring our defenses evolve alongside it will be critical.

Individual safeguards are not enough

Another challenge is that AI doesn’t just make attacks more sophisticated. It can also make them faster and more difficult to contain, allowing attackers to exploit a single weakness and spread through interconnected systems at scale.

This capability changes the nature of cyber risk at airports, which are real-time operational environments. Decisions are made in seconds and information flows continuously between stakeholders, with countless digital connections underpinning everything from passenger processing and baggage handling to aircraft turnaround and departure. Airports and airlines also hold highly valuable data and rely on a complex network of partners, many of whom require access to systems or information as part of day-to-day operations.

AI-enhanced cyber threats are exposing a truth that airports have always known operationally: no organization succeeds or fails in isolation. The same principle increasingly applies to cybersecurity.

For many years, cybersecurity strategies have focused on protecting individual organizations and strengthening digital perimeters.

The next stage of cybersecurity maturity will come from treating resilience as a shared responsibility across the ecosystem.

It requires greater visibility into technology dependencies and access points, stronger oversight of software supply chains, and closer cooperation between stakeholders so risks can be identified and eliminated before they spread beyond their point of origin.

Building resilience in the age of AI

The lesson from the Internet’s evolution is that technology often develops faster than our own understanding of its capabilities and risks. Resilience therefore depends on continuously reassessing this risk, adapting controls, and recognizing that cybersecurity is an ongoing process rather than a fixed destination.

While AI is clearly providing attackers with new capabilities, it is also strengthening the tools available to defenders. AI-driven anomaly detection, behavioural analytics, and automated response capabilities are already helping organisations identify unusual activity earlier and respond more quickly to threats.

As AI becomes permanently embedded in our infrastructure, we must harness its capabilities to strengthen ecosystem resilience or risk having it used against us. Navigating this landscape requires a combination of technology, visibility, and collaboration to identify vulnerabilities before they manifest as incidents.

Assaia partners closely with customers to proactively mitigate these AI threats, while ensuring that if an incident does occur, we respond with absolute speed and precision. Ultimately, when threats do emerge, a unified response from the aviation community is paramount.  

About the Author

Ana Butter is a senior executive with more than 25 years of international leadership experience across industries including AI, telecommunications, aerospace, and software. At Assaia, she drives operational excellence and secure, technology-enabled growth, drawing on extensive experience leading global expansion, digital transformation, and technology innovation initiatives.

Featured image credited to istock.com/CHUYN