Cybercriminals aren’t just keeping up. They’re fast blowing through cybersecurity defenses, even those powered by artificial intelligence.
Threat actors are automating and scaling faster than ever before in order to outsmart security systems.
Phishing emails feel more personal. Deepfake calls are far more believable. And ransomware spreads like wildfire.
The worst part? Hackers no longer need elite skills. Easier access to malicious tools turns even the least tech-savvy tyrant into a hacker.
So when it feels harder than ever to protect your business, what do you do?
Educate yourself.
Let’s take a look at some of the most prominent AI cybersecurity issues threatening companies today, and unpack some of the ways you can protect yourself.
Why Are AI Cybersecurity Threats So Dangerous?
A majority of companies, 78%, say that AI-powered cyber threats are already having a significant impact on their organization.
And it’s not difficult to understand why.
Let’s explore why AI cyber threats are such a problem.
Super Sophisticated, Scarily Convincing
A social engineering attack is when a threat actor tricks you into handing over information or doing something you shouldn't. Most often, they pose as a person or an entity that they’re not.
These attacks happen at the human level, where security is weakest. One convincing email and a threat gets in because a worker clicked a bad link.
In fact, 52% of vulnerabilities are tied to initial access, where social engineering techniques exploit trust before any firewall kicks in.
AI ramps up social engineering attacks.
It can scrape personal details from websites and social media accounts and then analyze user behavior to find out what makes a person tick. It uses this information to craft phishing (and voice phishing or vishing) messages that seem highly convincing.
And it’s working. Vishing attacks jumped 442% in the second half of 2024 alone.
AI-generated deepfakes take this even further.
Fraudulent actors can now impersonate key personnel, like CEOs and directors, on video calls. The audio and visuals are eerily accurate, fooling employees at all levels of the company.
And these tools break through traditional security systems with alarming ease.
Think about it like this. If a conventional hacker had to jimmy a window, AI walks straight in the front door.
Faster and Automated
Traditionally, hacker attacks are well-planned one-off heists. AI cyberattacks are automated, so they can get into systems faster and replicate this process for lots of different systems.
AI-powered cyber threats automate reconnaissance, malware deployment, and even vulnerability scanning. And they do it at breakneck speed.
The average breakout time? Just 48 minutes.
Continuously Learns to Evade Defenses
Unlike human attackers, AI doesn’t sleep.
It adapts in real time to evolve around malware detections. It refines attack vectors by learning how to dodge security defenses as it encounters them.
Worse still, AI-specific security measures can be used against themselves.
With data poisoning, AI-enabled hackers can corrupt the training data of AI-powered tools. They convince the system to weaken your threat detection without you noticing.
Targets With Precision
One of the benefits of AI is that it thrives on data. It can analyze vast datasets to identify patterns, behaviors, networks, and systems.
Great if it’s on your side. Terrible if it’s launching cyberattacks.
This ability to spot trends and anomalies means it's excellent at hyper-targeting. Scams are far more believable and effective. Attacks are more precise, better timed, and harder to detect.
It’s nothing for AI to pinpoint weak infrastructure or high-value assets and head straight there.
Creates Novel Attacks
AI invents completely new attack vectors.
In 2024 alone, 26 new adversaries were identified.
And the problem with novel cyber threats is that companies have no time to build defenses. This leads to zero-day attacks: attacks where companies have zero days to fix the vulnerability, because they didn't realize there was one.
Lower Barrier to Entry
Gone are the days of hackers having elite skills. Anyone with enough money and the right contacts can hack a system now.
Thanks to access-as-a-service, ransomware-as-a-service, and malicious GPTs, low-skilled hackers can rent AI tools to do the dirty work for them.
Top 7 AI Cybersecurity Threats to Watch Out For
AI-powered attacks are frightening. They’re fast, smart, and scalable.
Here are seven of the most dangerous potential threats your cybersecurity teams need to prepare for.
1. AI-Powered Phishing
AI-powered phishing attacks use natural language processing (NLP) to build messaging that sounds uncannily human.
These language models analyze massive amounts of personal data and generate hyper-personalized messaging.
Don’t get confused. The goal is still the same — to steal credentials and access systems. But click rates are through the roof because the messages seem so real.
Just check out this email posing as Netflix below.
The green text indicates that most of this is written by AI. Yet it sounds utterly human and very convincing.
2. Deepfake Social Engineering
Imagine you work in the finance department. Your CFO video calls you, telling you to make 15 transactions totaling $25 million. Why would you question it?
But with deepfake technology, you can’t be sure it’s actually the CFO. And now you’ve handed money over to a scammer.
This is exactly what happened at the British engineering company Arup.
The problem is that with enough training data, AI can impersonate real voices and facial movements. It uses this to fool employees into giving up passwords, authorizing transfers, or resetting passwords.
The sad part is that 72% of businesses are confident their teams will recognize a deepfake of their leaders, and it’s clear that they’re wrong.
And since these attacks go through humans, there’s no digital security system stopping them. This makes AI social engineering attacks very hard to detect in real time.
3. Adversarial Attacks
With tiny changes to input data, adversarial attacks trick AI systems into making incorrect classifications or decisions. Attackers do this to disrupt systems, gain unauthorized access, influence decisions, and evade detection.
Let’s say you have a smart assistant that opens your front door. The input data is your voice command.
An attacker might embed an inaudible (to humans) ultrasonic command into an audio track instructing the smart door to open.
4. Data Poisoning
AI makes decisions on the data it’s trained on. Bad data = bad decisions.
In a data poisoning attack, bad actors interfere with AI training datasets, so it makes decisions it shouldn’t. Threat actors do this to disable defenses, skew results, or introduce backdoors into your systems.
And companies expect it to get worse: 38% of businesses now expect to encounter AI-driven data poisoning in the near future.
5. Malicious GPTs
WormGPT and similar tools are large language models (LLMs) created or retained to do the bidding of cybercriminals.
These GPTs are trained to help users complete malicious activities like writing malware code or scripting social engineering campaigns.
And the popularity of these tools is increasing as they lower the entry barrier to cybercrime, with forum chatter about these tools jumping 200% this year.
6. AI-Enhanced Ransomware
Ransomware is a common problem with detrimental results. In fact, 89% of companies experienced ransomware attempts in the last year.
And of course, AI makes ransomware smarter and more precise.
AI-powered ransomware can map networks, identify critical systems, and choose the perfect time to strike. The result? Faster encryption, higher ransom demands, and bigger operational chaos.
Consider last year’s attack on an Indian healthcare provider. AI ransomware intelligently mapped the hospital's network, and it prioritized the encryption of critical systems.
This caused severe operational disruption and resulted in significant financial losses, not to mention the patients who suffered from treatment delays.
7. Model Theft and Model Inversion Attacks
AI models themselves have become a new attack surface. Cybercriminals either steal them outright or reverse-engineer them in a process known as model inversion. By doing this, attackers get access to proprietary tools, sensitive training data, and intellectual property.
They use this to bring down companies, launch breaches, or create competitive products. In some cases, they leverage the training data to demand a ransom.
How to Mitigate AI Cybersecurity Threats
To beat AI, your defenses need to be faster, smarter, and layered. Here’s how you stay ahead.
Implement a Zero-Trust Strategy
Treat every device, user, and system like they’re untrustworthy by default.
Here’s how you do this…
- Verify every access request every time using multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Apply the principle of least privilege, so each user can access only what they need to do their job
- Micro-segment your network to limit lateral movement
This way, even if an attacker gets a foothold, they can’t move more widely.
Continuously assess security
Audit your cybersecurity posture regularly — don’t wait until something suspicious pops up.
Use AI-based threat detection, behavioral analytics, and real-time monitoring to catch anomalies early.
Look for changes in user behavior, scan for malicious inputs, and regularly test your security’s strength.
Roll Out Company-Wide Training
Employees are the weakest link. One wrong click and a hacker’s in.
Run compulsory, role-specific cybersecurity training on how to spot AI-powered attacks, especially social engineering attempts.
Simulate attacks regularly to keep awareness high.
Create a Contingency Plan
Have a living incident response plan that outlines the steps to take to contain an attack, should one occur.
Follow the framework for the NIST incident response guidelines, since this provides comprehensive guidance on how to prepare for the worst.
Run drills. Involve stakeholders. Update it often.
Hire a Dedicated MSSP
Don’t go it alone. Partner with a trusted Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP). They bring proven expertise, tools, and processes, so your in-house team doesn’t have to start from scratch.
With the right MSSP, you’ll get 24/7 monitoring, patching, threat intelligence, and human experience and knowledge to support your internal cybersecurity teams.
Bonus tip: Invest in Cyber Insurance. Prevention matters, but so does protection. If the worst happens, it’ll help absorb the financial fallout.
Best AI Cybersecurity Threats with Expertise
AI has changed the game. But while hacker AI tools are smarter than ever, so are AI-driven cybersecurity solutions.
From phishing to ransomware, AI makes cybersecurity threats faster, more believable, and harder to detect than ever before.
But when you know what you’re dealing with, you can build barriers, create contingencies, and train your teams to aid in the fight.
So what’s next? Shoring up your defenses.
All Covered uses a multilayered approach to protect your business from evolving cyber threats. From endpoint protection and incident response to proactive monitoring and tailored defenses, we’ve got everything covered.
Ready to safeguard your systems and your future?
Explore our cybersecurity services or book a meeting to talk with an All Covered expert.
And download our comprehensive NIST Cybersecurity Checklist to stay prepared with a protocol on hand in case the worst happens.
