The growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revealed its darker side, where malicious actors use AI-powered cyber threats, resulting in autonomous attacks on businesses across the globe. AI-powered cyber threats are self-learning, adaptive, and highly efficient. They can bypass traditional cybersecurity safeguards and strategies, making businesses, especially SMBs, vulnerable to sophisticated breaches. Hence, organizations must use AI-powered cybersecurity tools to identify and protect against these risks using AI-driven defense capabilities.Today, it is essential for small to midsized businesses (SMBs) to learn what autonomous cyber attacks are and the risk to their business. This blog post explores both aspects and discusses the solution, AI-powered cybersecurity, enabling SMBs to learn how to protect themselves against autonomous attacks.

The Expanding Role of AI in Cyber Attacks

First, some predictions and statistics from experts that reflect the expanding role of AI in cyberattacks:

• Gartner predicts that 17% of the total cyberattacks by 2027 will involve generative AI.
• The Generative AI in Cyber Security Report reflects a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.17% since 2019 to reach $2.45B in 2024. Further, it is predicted to grow at 25.83% to touch the $7.75B mark in 2029. The growth in the security market is significant.
• 95% of cybersecurity professionals agree that AI-powered cybersecurity solutions expedite and enhance the efficiency of prevention, detection, response, and recovery.

Now, let’s dive into what autonomous attacks are and how to protect your business.

What Are Autonomous Cyber Attacks?

As the name suggests, autonomous cyberattacks can be launched and executed without human intervention. Such attacks use AI and machine learning (ML) to adapt, evolve, and execute an attack. Unfortunately, AI has a darker side as well, aiding malicious actors to identify vulnerabilities, launch targeted phishing campaigns, and deploy malware at a large scale, all with minimal human effort. Examples of AI-powered autonomous cyberattacks include:

• AI-driven phishing bots: They craft highly personalized scam messages and send phishing emails to unsuspecting users. In advanced cases, AI-powered chatbots can automate real-time communication that is indistinguishable from that of humans.
• Self-propagating ransomware: It leverages AI to automate some aspects of the ransomware attack. For example, AI helps research targets, pinpoint vulnerabilities, and encrypt data. It also adapts and modifies ransomware files to make detection more difficult for traditional cybersecurity tools.
• Deepfakes: These are AI-generated audio, video, or image files meant to deceive users and launch social engineering attacks. Examples include impersonating a senior official’s voice and instructing employees to transfer money, grant system access, or change passwords.
• Malicious GPTs (Generative Pre-trained Transformers): They use AI to produce intelligent text when responding to user prompts. They can generate new cyberattack vectors or support existing ones.
• Adversarial AI/ML: This involves manipulating information to reduce efficiency or disrupt AI/ML systems. For example, poisoning attacks target the AI/ML model training data to inject fake or misleading information, causing the model to perform less accurately. Evasion attacks target input data, causing the model to misclassify them and negatively impact its predictive capabilities.

Examples of Recent Autonomous Attacks:

Despite being a new concept, many AI-powered cyberattack incidents have made their mark by now, as is evident from the following recent examples:

• Midnight Blizzard Phishing Attacks: In 2023, Midnight Blizzard (a malicious group) launched AI-powered phishing attacks using Microsoft Teams to compromise thousands of Microsoft 365 accounts of SMBs.
• Deepfake: In February 2025, threat actors used an AI-generated deepfake video of the CEO of the UK engineering establishment, Arup, to steal $25 million.
• Gmail AI hack: Early this year, cyber attackers deployed deepfake videos impersonating Google support technicians. They used AI-generated phishing emails to bypass 2FA and trick Gmail users into revealing their credentials.

What Is the Risk of Autonomous Attacks for SMBs?

AI-powered cyber threats can significantly impact network systems and cause more severe damage than traditional threats. SMBs face significant risks from autonomous cyberattacks, including:

• Data breaches, resulting in the compromise or theft of sensitive consumer and business data
• Operational disruption, such as downtime from attacks, halting business operations
• Financial losses, such as ransom, fraud, and recovery costs that can cripple the SMB’s budgets
• Reputational damage, which is caused by the loss of consumer trust due to security failures

Generally, small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) operate with limited budgets and may lack the necessary infrastructure or resources to counter AI-driven threats. AI-powered malware can bypass 90% of traditional cybersecurity safeguards SMBs deploy. What can be done? Take advantage of AI-driven cybersecurity. SMBs can utilize AI to their advantage, with the help of vendors and their tools, to protect their systems and data from automated cyber threats.

How Does AI Defend Your Business?

While malicious actors use AI to launch and execute threats, SMBs can use AI to defend their businesses. AI enhances cybersecurity by detecting anomalies, predicting threats, and responding to them in real time. AI can analyze vast amounts of data to identify attack patterns, automatically block suspicious activities, and adapt to emerging threats more quickly than traditional cybersecurity methods. AI-powered tools, such as behavioral analytics, automated threat hunting, and self-healing networks, help SMBs stay ahead of threat actors.

How Do SMBs Protect Themselves Against Autonomous Attacks?

Only AI-powered cybersecurity can neutralize AI-powered cyber threats. SMBs must adapt quickly and utilize effective AI strategies to counter these threats. Below are some strategies:

• Implement AI-powered threat detection: Instead of relying on traditional protective tools, SMBs can invest in AI-powered cybersecurity solutions, like next-gen firewalls, endpoint detection, and automated threat response to identify unusual patterns and predict threats before they materialize.
• Enforce robust password policies and MFA: AI-powered password attacks can swiftly guess system passwords. Therefore, the best antidote is to implement MFA and encourage employees to use unique and robust passwords that are challenging to break.
• Monitor network activity: Deploy AI-driven monitoring to detect and neutralize threats early.
• Improve employee awareness: Employees are usually the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain. Therefore, SMBs should provide the necessary training to improve employee awareness.
• Periodic data backup to the cloud: Traditional storage systems are no match for AI-powered ransomware, as they can unlock files quickly. SMBs should ensure that their data is backed up to a secure and encrypted cloud service.
• Invest in cyber insurance: Insurance is key in providing financial protection if other preventive measures fail.

Final Words

AI has tremendous capabilities for cybersecurity, particularly as malicious actors continue to develop more advanced AI-powered cyber threats to compromise network systems. AI-powered scams will be almost indistinguishable from real interactions. With cyberattacks becoming increasingly autonomous, investing in AI-powered cybersecurity is the new standard for small to midsized businesses.

CoreTech uses, tests, and deploys AI-powered cybersecurity tools for clients. Contact CoreTech today to customize an IT support and security plan today. As the most reliable IT support provider in Omaha and Lincoln, NE, we will develop a robust cybersecurity plan tailored to your business needs.