As artificial intelligence accelerates the scale and sophistication of cybercrime worldwide, Nigeria’s foremost cybersecurity professional services firm, Digital Encode, on Monday announced the launch of DEPAS AI, its fully autonomous enterprise penetration testing platform.
The move comes as IBM’s ‘2026 Cost of a Data Breach Report’ finds that AI-enabled breaches now account for 25% of all malicious incidents, marking a 56% year-over-year increase.
The average cost of such breaches reached US$6.04 million, significantly higher than the global average of US$4.99 million.
Regionally, attack activity remains highest in North America at 29%, followed by Asia-Pacific at 27%, Europe at 25%, Middle East & Africa at 10%, and Latin America at 9%, underscoring the borderless nature of the AI-driven threat.
Introducing DEPAS AI: Deep. Precise. Autonomous.
Digital Encode Penetration Autonomous System (DEPAS) AI was built to shift organisations from periodic, manual assessments to continuous autonomous cyber resilience.
The DEPAS AI platform deploys a team of specialised AI security agents that operate concurrently across an organisation’s entire attack surface.
An agentic coordinator orchestrates the operation, maintains full context of the system under test, analyses results in real time, and spawns follow-up agents to ensure deep coverage.
Every finding is then independently reproduced by a verification agent to eliminate false positives. A proprietary chain-builder also maps individual vulnerabilities into high-impact attack chains, revealing how adversaries could exploit them in sequence.
DEPAS AI autonomously tests enterprise-bespoke applications, web applications, APIs, mobile applications, Backend systems, cloud environments, and network/IP infrastructure.
“AI is now being weaponised by attackers to move faster than human teams can respond,” said the Chief Visionary Officer at Digital Encode, Prof. Obadare. “DEPAS AI combines Artificial Intelligence with Human Intelligence to give organisations the same speed and scale in defense. We are reimagining penetration testing for the AI era.”
Key Capabilities:
- Autonomous Testing: 24/7 coverage across applications, cloud, and network assets
- Verified Accuracy: Independent validation of every vulnerability to remove noise
- Attack Chain Mapping: Connects disparate flaws into real-world exploit paths
- Actionable Outcomes: Executive-ready reports, remediation guidance, and compliance mapping
With DEPAS AI, Digital Encode aims to equip enterprises in Nigeria and around the world with the tools to detect, prioritise, and remediate risks before they can be exploited by cybercriminals.
