Marketplace Tech AI cyberattacks pose special risks for small and medium businesses
Sep 24, 2025
Tony Pietrocola, president and co-founder of AgileBlue, discusses the rising threat of AI-enabled cyberattacks targeting small and medium businesses. He highlights how criminals are using deepfake technology to create deceptive audio and video, making it easier to trick employees. Pietrocola emphasizes that limited budgets and a lack of specialized cybersecurity talent leave smaller organizations particularly vulnerable. He also shares practical defense strategies, including employee training and the importance of leveraging outsourced security operations.
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AI Is Powering More Persuasive Attacks
- AI is already embedded in many modern ransomware and phishing campaigns, making attacks more automated and persuasive.
- Small and mid-sized organizations face higher risk because they lack matching defensive tools and expertise.
Multi-Modal Deepfakes Raise Believability
- Attackers combine deepfake video, voice cloning, and highly convincing emails to create multi-modal fraud that exploits senses of sight, sound, and text.
- Those layered signals increase the chance employees will act, because victims believe they saw, heard, or read the request.
Verify Before You Click Or Pay
- Avoid clicking links or approving requests without independent verification, since roughly 60% of breaches start with human actions like clicks.
- Verify requests via a separate channel before granting access to accounts or initiating payments.