Cybersecurity’s New Split Brain: Frontline Teams Sound the Alarm While the C-Suite Turns Down the Volume

If you want to understand why cyberattacks keep landing harder and faster, look beyond attacker TTPs and into the boardroom. A new study from VikingCloud reveals a widening psychological fault line inside organizations — one that’s quietly eroding resilience from within.

Nine in ten frontline cybersecurity managers say attacks are hitting more frequently, and 88% say those attacks have grown more severe in the past year. Yet in the corner office, that urgency drops to 77% and 65% respectively. Inside the SOC, teams are drowning. In the C-suite, leaders see rising waves — but not a flood.

That disconnect isn’t just about vibes; it’s about velocity. When perception diverges from reality, budgets drift, incidents go unreported, and attackers enjoy the gift of organizational lag.

The Four Fault Lines Splitting Security Teams and Leadership

1. Different Worlds, Different Damage

Frontline managers overwhelmingly report taking hits:79% say a successful cyberattack struck their organization in the past year, compared with 65% of executives. When one layer of the org sees carnage and the other sees “occasional turbulence,” strategy ceases to track with ground truth.

2. Executives Think Criminals Have the Upper Hand — Their Teams Don’t

There’s a quiet admission happening at the top:43% of C-suite cyber leaders believe modern attackers are more advanced than their internal teams. Only 12% of managers agree. That gap suggests leadership sees a widening skills deficit — while frontline teams may be underestimating the sophistication barreling toward them.

3. Incidents Are Going Unreported — and Everyone Knows It

If transparency is a control, most organizations don’t have it.81% of managers admit at least one material cyber incident never made its way up the chain in the past year. Only 55% of C-suite cyber leaders believe that happens. Fear, ambiguity, and political pressure combine into one brutal result: leaders flying blind when decisions matter most.

4. AI Is Freeing Up Time — But Not Toward the Same Goals

Both sides agree that AI is saving valuable analyst hours. But how that saved time gets reinvested looks like two completely different worlds:

• Frontline managers want to put it into security culture and employee training (52%).

  
  

• C-suite cyber leaders want threat hunting, intelligence analysis (49%), upskilling (48%), and custom tooling (43%).

Both priorities matter — but misalignment means the org gains neither cultural resilience nor advanced detection at full strength.

The Threat Landscape Isn’t Just Worse — It’s Accelerating

Across the board, 2025 looks like the year the threat curve bent upward.

Deepfakes Go From Sideshow to Center Stage

The number of professionals who feel least prepared to handle deepfake attacks exploded:

• From 3% to 21% among managers

• From 6% to 28% among C-suite cyber leaders

Synthetic media is no longer a future problem; it’s today’s break-glass scenario.

AI-Powered Attacks Are the New Top Pain Point

Managers (62%) and executives (53%) both say AI-driven attacks are now their single biggest challenge. C-suite leaders are especially concerned about:

• Generative or agentic AI phishing (45%)

• Prompt injection and model manipulation (44%)

• AI-vishing via voice deepfakes (43%)

Add it up, and you get a threat landscape evolving faster than most organizations can read the patch notes.

Defensive Tech Can’t Keep Up

Both groups quietly concede that the attacker toolkit has leapt ahead of the defender toolkit — 36% of execs and 38% of managers say adversaries’ technology outclasses their own stack.

What Alignment Actually Requires

Invest Where the Overlap Lives

Both sides see AI as a way to reduce noise and get analysts back to deep work. Put dollars into automation that accelerates detection and response instead of adding another dashboard to the pile.

Fix the Culture of Risky Silence

Managers cite fear of blame (52%) as a top reason incidents go unreported. Executives fear punitive reactions from boards (37%). Build protected reporting channels and normalize transparency — or accept that hidden incidents will become hidden consequences.

Force Cross-Level Conversations

Frontline context plus executive perspective is the formula for resilient decision-making. Joint post-incident reviews should be mandatory, not a “maturity milestone.”

Train Everyone — Not Just the SOC — on AI Risk

Fewer than half of orgs have provided training on GenAI or agentic AI threats. In 2026, that’s not a training gap; it’s a systemic vulnerability.

Alignment Is the New Competitive Edge

Cyber defense has officially become a team sport. VikingCloud’s study makes it clear: organizations that close the perception gap between SOC teams and the C-suite will outpace attackers. Those that don’t will keep losing precious time, talent, and resilience to internal misalignment long before the first malware packet even hits their perimeter.