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The Role of AI, ETCISO
For years, legacy modernization has largely been viewed through the lens of productivity, agility and cloud economics. The rapid evolution of AI is changing that equation. As AI increases the speed at which vulnerabilities can be identified and potentially exploited, the systems enterprises have depended on for decades increasingly need to be considered as part of the cybersecurity and resilience agenda.
The issue is not simply that these systems are old. Many continue to perform business-critical functions reliably. The challenge is that they were not designed for today’s levels of connectivity or for a threat environment increasingly shaped by AI.
A bank, airline, insurer, healthcare organization or government agency may depend on systems that have operated reliably for years. Over time, however, many such systems have been connected through APIs, portals, cloud platforms, mobile interfaces, partner access and third-party integrations. Each connection may serve a legitimate business purpose, but together they can create a very different exposure profile from the one originally envisaged.
When machine-speed threats meet enterprise-speed remediation
One of the most important implications of AI for cybersecurity is speed. Vulnerability discovery and exploit development are accelerating, while patching, testing and business approvals still operate at enterprise speed.
Finding a vulnerability is only one part of the challenge. Organizations must also determine whether they can assess, test and deploy a fix quickly enough without disrupting critical operations.
Consider a healthcare claims platform carrying a known exposure. Patching it could potentially disrupt provider payments. An airline scheduling system may require extensive regression testing because downtime is not an option. A utility operations platform may require testing against physical infrastructure and safety requirements before any change can be implemented. In such situations, it is often the potential business impact of remediation, rather than the technical fix itself, that determines how quickly an organization can act.
This creates a cybersecurity challenge that technology teams alone cannot solve.
Cyber resilience is becoming a C-suite conversation
Behind many security exposures lies a broader architectural condition: unsupported platforms, fragmented identity, limited observability, hard-coded access, unmaintained libraries or applications that cannot easily be patched without affecting the business processes they support. The vulnerability may be the immediate symptom, but the underlying architecture can be the condition that allows it to persist.
That is why legacy risk can no longer sit exclusively with either the CIO or the CISO.
The CIO may lead modernization, the CISO cyber resilience, the CTO architecture and engineering standards, and the CFO capital allocation and risk trade-offs. But the underlying exposure crosses these organizational boundaries. Decisions about modernization therefore increasingly need to consider resilience and cybersecurity alongside efficiency and growth.
Modernize according to risk, not age
This does not mean every legacy application needs to be replaced.
Some systems can continue to be defended in place. Others may need immediate hardening, while those whose structural risk cannot be adequately addressed may need to be re-engineered or retired. The appropriate response depends on exposure, business criticality and whether the organization can realistically keep pace with remediation on the existing system.
A practical starting point is visibility.
Enterprises need a clear understanding of which systems matter most, where they connect, what they depend on, who owns them, how quickly vulnerabilities can be addressed and what the potential impact could be if something goes wrong.
They can then examine that environment from an attacker’s perspective. Which systems become particularly attractive because of the intersection of connectivity, privilege, dependency and slow remediation? The greatest risk may not necessarily reside in the largest or oldest asset, but where several of these factors come together.
Modernization as a security strategy
Hardening legacy systems can buy valuable time. But where an organization’s remediation cycle cannot keep pace with the changing threat environment, hardening alone may not address the structural problem.
This is where the modernization and cybersecurity agendas converge.
Modernization is no longer only about making enterprises faster, more agile or more cost-efficient. Increasingly, it is also about making critical technology environments more defensible.
As AI reshapes both enterprise technology and the threat landscape around it, organizations need to understand what they are running, how those systems are connected and where their most consequential exposures sit. The organizations that treat modernization and cyber resilience as interconnected priorities will be better equipped to build technology estates designed for an AI-enabled world.
The author is Vishal Salvi, SVP & Global Head of Cybersecurity, Cognizant.
Disclaimer: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETCISO does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETCISO shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organization directly or indirectly.
