One of the biggest questions I get whenever I’m teaching anything focused on core skills—whether it’s network security, SOC analysis, or ecurity essentials—is whether any of these classes are even necessary anymore because of AI.
The assumption seems to be that AI is going to eliminate the need for foundational knowledge. People believe that AI will simply handle the technical details for us, allowing security professionals to skip over the basics and move directly to the advanced work.
Unfortunately, that assumption creates a sense of hopelessness.
Junior analysts who are trying to enter the field start wondering whether it’s worth studying at all. Companies looking to hire are hesitant because they’re not sure what the workforce will look like in a few years. Everyone is waiting to see where things land.
Context Is Everything
When it comes to core information security skills, I believe we need to recognize something important:
The fundamentals matter more today than they ever have.
The reason is context.
The more context and understanding you have about a technical problem, the more effective AI becomes. Artificial intelligence is not a replacement for expertise. It amplifies expertise.
If you put AI in the hands of someone who doesn’t understand networking, operating systems, or security fundamentals, the impact is often limited. They may get answers faster, but they have no way to evaluate whether those answers are correct.
Put the same tools in the hands of someone who understands TCP/IP, operating systems, network architecture, authentication, and how systems actually work, and AI becomes an incredible force multiplier.
As we move into the future, it will become even more important for security professionals to understand the basics. Those foundational skills provide the context necessary to ask better questions, recognize bad answers, and effectively leverage increasingly powerful AI tools.
What Chess Can Teach Us
I also think we can look at chess as a preview of where our industry is heading.
Chess is more popular today than it has ever been. There are more strong chess players than at any other point in history. At the same time, AI engines can defeat even the world’s best players without breaking a sweat.
So why hasn’t AI killed chess?
Because the chess community embraced it.
Players use AI engines like Stockfish to analyze games, identify mistakes, study openings, improve endgame strategy, and accelerate learning. Tournament organizers use AI to help detect cheating. Coaches use AI to provide insights that would have been impossible to deliver at scale just a few decades ago.
The result isn’t fewer chess players. In fact, it is the opposite. The other result is better chess players.
Where Cybersecurity Is Heading
I believe cybersecurity is heading down a very similar path.
AI will help us learn faster. It will help us identify patterns more quickly. It will help us automate repetitive work and explore technical problems at a scale that wasn’t previously possible.
But none of that eliminates the need for foundational knowledge.
In fact, it increases its importance.
The people who understand the fundamentals will be the ones who get the most value from AI. They’ll be able to guide it, challenge it, verify it, and use it to solve increasingly complex problems.
The future of cybersecurity isn’t humans versus AI.
It’s humans with strong fundamentals using AI to become dramatically more effective than ever before.
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