Ethical and Legal Considerations in AI-Based Cybersecurity Solutions

Abstract

Artificial intelligence has emerged as the defining technology of contemporary cybersecurity practice, with AI-powered tools now deployed across the full spectrum of defensive and offensive security functions: threat detection and anomaly identification, malware analysis, vulnerability discovery, intrusion prevention, identity and access management, threat intelligence synthesis, and automated incident response. The integration of AI into cybersecurity operations has generated genuine and substantial defensive benefits — enabling detection at speeds and scales that human analysts cannot achieve, identifying patterns invisible to conventional rule-based systems, and enabling proactive defence against evolving threat actor tactics. Yet AI-based cybersecurity solutions simultaneously introduce a set of ethical and legal challenges whose significance has not been adequately addressed by the scholarly literature or by emerging AI governance frameworks.