AI and the Rise of Cyberthreats: Everything You Need to Know to Start Protecting Your Business in 2026 and Beyond

AI-powered tools, from advanced automation systems to LLMS and beyond, have shifted workflows, supercharged productivity, and opened entirely new pathways for businesses. Despite this, they’ve also introduced a whole new host of threats to watch out for and prepare against.

In fact, the majority of top cyberthreats in 2026 and beyond are entirely tied to AI tools, development, and threats. To help you gear up your business against these threats, however, you first need to understand where your weak points lie.

AI-Built Holes In Your System

All AI-generated code related to your business must be reviewed for security issues, threats, and loopholes. While AI can generate extensive code catalogues in a matter of seconds, it also poses severe risks. Reports indicate that AI-generated code will need to be continually re-evaluated for security by multiple stakeholders (developers, adopters, IT teams, and beyond). This is because it’s difficult currently to evaluate code generation models for security, as current metrics analyze a model’s ability to generate functional code, rather than secure code.

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AI’s Role in Automating Cybercrime

Another prominent issue is the use of AI to automate, improve, and streamline cyberattacks. Agentic AI, in particular, is used to automate attacks, spam messages, and even uncover SaaS vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, meaning that it’s probing your system around the clock for weaknesses.

These weaknesses are also more common than you think with cloud-based systems. This is because of the way they’re structured. Even cloud-based AI solutions ultimately store data for multiple customers on a single server, creating data crossover risks. There’s also the classic concerns of security misconfigurations, blackspots, and integration challenges.

With all these SaaS security risks, it’s more important than ever to know how to proactively choose better SaaS solutions, configure them, and then use targeted AI solutions to actively prevent probes and attacks.

AI-Backed Identity Theft

Generative AI’s ability to create hyper-realistic photos, videos, and even copy voices is a prime concern for all businesses. In 2024, a finance worker paid $25 million to fraudsters. Why? Because his chief financial officer told him to. The catch is that the CFO was a deepfake. In fact, everyone on the conference call except the finance worker was a deepfake.

The worst part is that the worker initially suspected the email that kicked this attack off was a phishing email. He put these doubts aside, however, when the other people on the call looked and sounded just like his colleagues.

This is just one way that AI deepfakes are being used. Other scams include tricking online facial recognition by mimicking real people’s faces and taking out loans in the real person’s name. 

Since application data is stored in the cloud, it’s at risk of security misconfigurations, loss of control, and blackspots. Data from different customers is stored on the same SaaS server, which creates a risk of data crossover.

Agentic AI’s 24/7 Assault

Agentic AI, or AI agents, can work autonomously 24/7, completing multiple tasks at once without human input after the first prompt. As this technology advances, agentic AI is expected to become more common in both cybersecurity and cybercrime. Naturally, agentic AI defenders will also need to be closely monitored and tested continuously. Experts recommend that security teams conduct agent-in-the-wild simulations, evaluate the agent’s choices, refine their guardrails and provenance, and ultimately their accountability, on an ongoing basis.

The Risk of Future Quantum Computing

While quantum computing isn’t yet a reality, recent advancements mean that its worldwide launch could be on the horizon, and criminals are banking on it. Essentially, what crime experts are seeing today is a “harvest now, decrypt later” approach, where even currently encrypted data isn’t safe.

How to Start Protecting Your Systems Today

There are several steps you can take to protect your business and data better.

1. Ensure All Systems are Expertly Configured

The first step to improving your security is to have security experts comb through your existing setup to evaluate the safety and defenses of your chosen SaaS solutions and then work to optimize the security configurations. Think of this as giving your house a full inspection and ensuring that the foundation and points of egress are at the ready.

2.  Use Around-the-Clock Monitoring Systems

You’ll need to use AI to beat AI. Have an AI-powered security system constantly monitor your system for suspicious activity. Having an autonomous defensive system that uses advanced analytics, machine learning, and the ability to scan and understand real-time data quickly will allow you to pinpoint potential threats and counter them immediately.

3.  Establish Key Phrases and Security Protocols Amongst Workers

Create rigorous proof-of-identity protocols to ensure that every worker can be confident that the person they’re speaking to is real and who they say they are. Sometimes, something as simple as requiring an in-person sign-off for large-scale decisions (such as sending large sums of money) can help save your business millions. 

4.  Train Employees on Data Security

Every member of your team needs to be continually updated and trained on data and digital security. This includes how to safely use genAI tools, without, for example, a junior dumping all the sensitive data they have access to into ChatGPT and putting your business at risk.