Yesterday’s Cybersecurity Model in Today’s World of AI
AI has become the fastest-adopted business technology in history. And traditional cybersecurity practices are struggling to keep up.
That’s because AI is creating new vulnerabilities in small businesses while giving attackers powerful tools that enhance existing cyber threats, all at record speeds.
If businesses want to protect themselves in this new world of AI, something needs to change.
In this blog, we’re diving into why traditional practices are lagging behind modern threats, and how small businesses can use a combination of AI-powered security tools with expert support to keep pace.
Key takeaways
- AI is making traditional threats more convincing, scalable, and effective. This includes Phishing, ransomware, business email compromise, and more.
- AI tools introduce new security risks. Without proper access controls and clear usage policies, businesses risk exposing sensitive data through internal AI agents and public AI tools.
- Traditional security practices are struggling to keep pace with AI-powered threats. AI security automation can help improve threat detection and response times.
- AI security still requires human oversight. Security experts provide needed context that AI lacks when investigating potential security alerts.
- An MSP can help small businesses close their widening security gap. From securing AI tools to establishing usage policies, an MSP can help businesses adopt AI while managing and strengthening their cybersecurity.
Old Threats, New Power
In the age of AI security, traditional cyberattacks aren’t going to vanish, far from it. Instead, they’re becoming more convincing, scalable, and effective.
- Phishing: According to research conducted by KnowBe4, 86% of phishing attacks observed over six months involved AI. Generative AI helps attackers design hyper-personalized, realistic messages at scale, making malicious emails both harder to spot and easier to make.
- Ransomware: Attackers can use AI to automate much of the ransomware process, lowering the barrier of entry for would-be bad actors, while also greatly increasing the speed of attacks.
- Business Email Compromise (BEC): AI can help criminals mimic writing styles to create convincing requests for payments, credentials, or sensitive information at scale.
These are far from the only AI-powered threats, either, with an increasing number of adversarial AI attacks targeting AI tools themselves. According to CrowdStrike’s 2026 Global Threat report, these attacks have increased by 89% year over year.
This adds another massive threat to an already long list cybersecurity teams must defend against.
AI Tools Need to Be Secured
Then there’s the risk inherent in AI tools themselves.
AI tools need strong security controls and clear AI usage policies to support cybersecurity. Unmanaged or undocumented AI use can lead to data exposure, unauthorized access, and other security risks.
Think of it this way: an AI agent designed to answer HR questions might have access to your entire HR database. Without the right safeguards, that agent could expose information to people who shouldn’t see it.
This applies whenever AI is used in a business, whether that’s finance, customer service, or internal operations.
Public AI tools introduce their own slew of potential issues. These tools typically exist outside of your own business environment. Depending on how the AI tool handles data and accounts, anything entered into them functionally leaves your direct control.
For example, if an employee pastes customer records, financial information, or a confidential business document into an external AI service, it could suddenly lead to data exposure and compliance issues.
Usage policies inform your employees what AI tools are approved for work use and what information is safe to enter into them.
The Velocity Paradox: A Disconnect in Structure
SailPoint’s Horizon of Identity Security report explores what it calls the “velocity paradox”: when organizations start using AI to speed up their operations while relying on traditional security controls to secure them. And although the report focuses on identity security, a subset of cybersecurity, the underlying idea applies to cybersecurity as a whole.
According to figures cited in The Hacker News’ coverage of SailPoint’s report, 60% of organizations either consistently lack a formal security program or rely on a manual, tool-assisted security approach.
Simply put, traditional security practices may struggle to scale alongside AI agents. As The Hacker News puts it, “the core of the velocity paradox is that processes designed for people do not work for machines.”
Businesses need to close this widening gap by adapting their security to account for AI instead of assuming their existing controls are enough. Because the old model is falling behind.
The Old Model Is Too Slow
Let’s look at how the cybersecurity response process has traditionally been handled.
Security teams rely on a combination of tools, such as remote monitoring and management (RMM) software, antivirus, and endpoint detection and response (EDR), to spot and respond to potential threats.
A typical response process looks something like this:
- Detect a suspicious event: Antivirus flags a potential infection on an employee’s laptop.
- Investigate whether it’s a genuine threat: Security teams dig into the alert and determine whether the activity is malicious.
- Contain the threat: If the device is compromised, the team isolates it from the network to prevent the threat from spreading.
- Recover and remediate affected systems: The team removes the malware, repairs any damage, and restores the device.
These steps are still critical today. What’s changed is the speed at which they need to happen.
When dealing with AI security threats, that window for proper threat response becomes much smaller. By the time someone notices an alert and determines how to respond, the threat could have already spread across your business. But when security teams implement AI-powered threat detection, they have a much greater chance of spotting these threats before they spread as opposed to relying on manual processes alone.
So, how do small businesses implement AI security without building an entirely new operation from scratch?
They get help.
Small Businesses Need Help: Enter an MSP
Adjusting your security posture can be overwhelming. That’s why managed service providers (MSPs) help bridge the gap between small in-house IT teams and the AI security tools and expertise needed to keep pace with today’s cybersecurity threats.
You can think of AI automation as the engine that helps security move faster and an MSP as the mechanic that makes sure everything is working as it should be.
An MSP can help small businesses:
- Select and secure AI tools: An MSP can identify AI vendors and tools for your business while helping implement proper security policies and access controls for these tools.
- Outline clear AI usage policies: An MSP can help design a custom AI usage policy that outlines approved AI tools, what data can be entered into these tools, who can use them, and more.
- Manage and monitor security tools: AI security still relies on communicating with traditional security tools such as multifactor authentication, encryption, and more. A good MSP can help manage these tools.
- Navigate compliance requirements: Depending on your industry, using AI can introduce additional data governance and compliance considerations. An MSP can make sure you have the appropriate controls to satisfy regulations such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, or the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.
- Train their team: MSPs can provide regular cyber awareness training so employees can better recognize and respond to threats.
By working with an MSP, small to medium-sized businesses can offload some of the pressure created by these rising cybersecurity threats.
A Note on Human Oversight
While AI is great at sifting through reams of security alerts, it won’t always have the context to tell a false positive from a real threat.
That’s where human oversight becomes critical.
A modern security operation should combine tried-and-true security tools with AI automation, all managed by a team of experts who understand how it all works together.
Conclusion: The Next Step of Security
If you’re worried that your security posture may not be quite as prepared as you thought, here’s what you can do right now:
- Look at how you’re currently handling your cybersecurity.
- Figure out what is being done manually.
- Determine what could be improved with automation.
- Reach out to an expert for guidance.
An expert like The 20 MSP.
At The 20 MSP, we offer comprehensive risk management assessments to help businesses like yours identify gaps in their security environment. Our team can help you determine where stronger security controls and AI make sense, and then help integrate them.
That’s all on top of our 24/7/365 live help desk, cybersecurity offerings, and more, with predictable pricing through our flat-rate service model.
Ready to get started? Contact The 20 MSP today.
FAQ
How has AI changed the cybersecurity landscape?
AI is increasing the speed, effectiveness, and scale of traditional cyberattacks, forcing businesses to rethink how they approach cybersecurity. Security teams must adopt AI tools to help combat these new threats.
How can businesses secure their AI tools?
Businesses can create AI usage policies that establish guidelines for employee use, alongside security controls that define what AI Tools can access and how they can be used. Together, these measures reduce the risk of unauthorized access and sensitive data exposure.
Can AI security replace human experts?
No. AI alone cannot replace a comprehensive security environment, and critically, AI lacks the broader context a human expert can bring to incident response. The strongest approach combines traditional security tools, AI, and human security teams.
How can an MSP help small businesses improve AI security?
An MSP can help small businesses develop AI usage policies, manage their security tools, and provide cybersecurity awareness training so employees can better recognize and respond to threats.
