Cybersecurity
AI Threats are a Distraction. Your Real Problem is Closer to Home
Let’s be honest: AI-powered cyberattacks are a terrifying prospect. But they aren’t the biggest threat to your business.
The biggest threat is the distraction they create.
For over 15 years, I’ve seen the same story play out. Leadership gets spooked by the latest “AI super-threat,” while the security team still struggles to answer basic questions like, “Where is our most sensitive customer data?” or “Who owns patching for that critical system?” We chase shiny new tools while engineers get pulled into last-minute compliance drills, and critical vulnerabilities get deprioritized.
This is the classic “fancy lock on a screen door” problem. Organizations are rushing to deploy AI-driven defenses, but attackers are using AI with fewer rules and more agility to walk right through fundamental gaps in process, ownership, and culture. For mid-market companies especially, ignoring the basics is an invitation to become the next cautionary tale.
Why Static Defenses Fail in a Dynamic World
When I started my career, security was a checklist: antivirus, patches, and strong firewalls. That world is long gone. Today, polymorphic malware rewrites itself to evade signatures, and botnets launch attacks faster than any human can respond.
Encrypted traffic has become the adversary’s favorite hiding spot. Zscaler’s 2024 ThreatLabz report found that nearly 90% of malware is now delivered over encrypted channels. That means nine out of ten threats are invisible to legacy tools that can’t inspect that traffic.
The real bottleneck, however, isn’t just technology; it’s organizational friction. I’ve watched great security teams spend weeks just trying to get buy-in to close a known gap. In the time it takes to schedule the meetings, an automated attacker can be in and out. Being static is no longer an option. Security programs must be context-aware and focused on the fast-moving parts of the business.
The Industrialization of Cybercrime
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Attackers are entrepreneurs running a business. They’re simply adopting new tech to improve their ROI—just like we are. AI is helping them industrialize their operations.
- Phishing-as-a-Service, Supercharged: Phishing is still the #1 way in. The FBI and IBM report it as the top initial access vector for years running. Now, with generative AI tools like “FraudGPT,” criminals can create perfectly tailored, grammar-free phishing campaigns at a scale we’ve never seen.
- The Voice is a Lie: Voice phishing (“vishing”) is exploding. CrowdStrike saw a 442% increase as attackers use AI-cloned voices to impersonate executives and trick employees into wiring funds. A UK energy firm lost over $243,000 this way from a single call.
- The Rise of the Automated Adversary: CrowdStrike’s threat hunters now see end-to-end automated campaigns—from AI-generated résumés with deepfake video interviews to malware-free intrusions that live entirely in the cloud.
Defenders are facing threats that adapt and persist with minimal human oversight. Attackers have been automating for years; AI just put their workflow on hyperdrive.
To keep up, it’s high time we let go of outdated, checklist-driven approaches to compliance and cybsercurity. Searching for a silver bullet with the latest tool in the market is not the answer either. That said, this is a unique opportunity to going back to the basics.
Stop Asking “Are We Compliant?” Start Asking “Are We Resilient?”
Even as AI reshapes the landscape, most breaches still happen because of neglected fundamentals. Sure, that CEO’s voice was cloned, but the real failure was likely a broken financial approval process. The AI was just the final step in a chain of missed basics.
AI doesn’t need to find a zero-day exploit when it can find a five-year-old unpatched server or a developer with admin rights to everything. Buying another AI-powered security tool won’t fix a broken culture. AI should strengthen strong processes, not substitute for them.
This is where leadership often gets it wrong. I’ve been in boardrooms where the question was, “Are we compliant?” The better question is, “Does our security program make our business stronger?”
Compliance becomes a checkbox exercise. Product teams sprint ahead, engineers are handed security duties without resources, and leaders assume a clean audit means the business is safe. It doesn’t. The solution isn’t more tools; it’s stronger scaffolding from the top down. Security must be tied directly to business growth and product integrity.
A Pragmatic Playbook for the AI Era
Fortune 500s can throw money at this problem. Mid-market companies have to be smarter. So, what do you actually do?
- Fix Your Foundation First. Before you buy another tool, make sure you have a rock-solid inventory of your data, bulletproof access controls, and a patching process that actually works.
- Put AI on the Agenda. Run tabletop exercises based on AI-driven attacks. Make it a regular part of board reporting so it’s treated as a business risk, not an IT problem.
- Focus on Behavior, Not Just Static Signals. Prioritize tools that spot weird activity—like a user account suddenly accessing a database it never touches—over tools that just hunt for known malware.
AI Isn’t the Enemy—Complacency Is
AI is not a double-edged sword; it’s a magnifying glass. It makes good processes more efficient and bad processes catastrophic.
Attackers will always have new tools. The real question is whether your security strategy is built on a solid foundation of resilience or just chasing the next shiny object. The era of set-it-and-forget-it security is over. Organizations that build a culture of security and nail the fundamentals will win, even in the age of autonomous threats.
