Hidden Cyber Threat AI Is Preparing That Some Companies Aren't Thinking About

Cyber threats are in an era where defense and attack are powered by artificial intelligence. While AI has seen a rapid advancement in recent times, it has raised concern among world leaders, policymakers and experts.

Evidently, the rapid and unpredictable progression of AI capabilities suggests that their advancement may soon rival the immense power of the human brain. Thus, with the clock constantly ticking, urgent and proactive measures need to be set in place to mitigate unforeseen, looming future risks.

According to this research, Geoffrey Hinton (Winner, Nobel Prize in Physics (2024), aka "godfather of AI") has grown more worried since 2023, noting that AI advances faster than expected, excelling at reasoning and deception. Hinton warns that to stay operational, if it perceives threats to its goals, AI could be deceptive. He predicts that AI can spur massive unemployment ( replacing software engineers, routine jobs), soar profits for companies, and create societal disruption under capitalism. He estimates a 10–20% chance of human extinction by superintelligent AI within decades, emphasizing bad actors using it for harm,  like bioweapons, and the need for regulation.

AI is Not Slowing Down on Attacks

Here are a few incidents that prove that artificial intelligence isn't slowing down on attacks:

According to a report by Deep Instincts, 75% of cybersecurity professionals had to modify their strategies last year to address AI-generated incidents.

According to this post on Harvard Business Reviews, spammers save about 95% in campaign costs using large language models (LLMs) to generate phishing emails.

According to a post on Deloitte, Gen AI will multiply losses from deepfakes and other attacks by 32% to $40 billion annually by 2027.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in 2023, crypto-related losses totalled $5.6 billion nationally, accounting for 50% of total reported losses from financial fraud complaints. Imagine how much more was lost from 2024-2025.

Hidden Dooms AI is Preparing That Some Companies Are Yet to See

Widespread Disruption: The advancement in AI technology is gradually turning AI to a double-edged sword. AI can be used to launch a sophisticated cyberattack that could cause a widespread disruption to critical infrastructure, financial systems and other key sectors within a company and beyond. No wonder, David Dalrymple, an AI safety expert, warns that AI advancement is moving super fast, with the world potentially running out of time for safety preparation.

Social Manipulation: It's no longer news that AI has so many fascinating advantages but companies need to have a deep understanding of it, so as not to be doomed by it. Gary Marcus, an AI critic and cognitive scientist, warns that current LLMs are dishonest, unpredictable and potentially dangerous. He further notes that one of the real harms AI is capable of is psychological manipulation, which can be leveraged by attackers to socially manipulate public opinions, spread misinformation that could lead to social unrest and destabilization of company and society. 

Advent of Superintelligence and Control Problem: With AI, the possibility of creating a Superintelligent agent that surpasses human intelligence (the Creator) is raising eyebrows. 

Yoshua Bengio said in a Wall Street Journal post, “If we build machines that are way smarter than us and have their own preservation goal, then we are creating a competitor to humanity smarter than us”.

Unfortunately, the created Superintelligent AI lacks human ethics and would eventually view humans as obstacles to its goal.  That way, humanity won’t be able to control the problem, potentially leading to human extinction or war.

Operational Code Bloat or Flawed Value Lock-in: Literally, the AI system's function is dependent on the locked-in value that was programmed. However, with AI’s ability to generate codes, it could add in unwanted features – increasing its vulnerability or attack surface.

Thus, an attacker could reprogram the AI system to sabotage via data poisoning or flawed values to pursue evil actions that are detrimental to humanity.

Common Faults Caused By Companies

#1: Poor Integration of GenAI Tools: The integration of third-party GenAI tools like ChatGPT and similar LLMs, without strict controls, has led to so many data leaks that could enable sabotage or espionage opportunities, as leaked data can be weaponized externally. 

#2: Full Reliance on AI Agents Without Human Oversight: Full reliance on agentic AI without human guidance has led to some critical accidents. According to research, transport companies such as Tesla and Uber have experienced serious incidents due to an over-reliance on AI without human oversight.

#3: Poor Investment In AI Safety and Ethics: Oftentimes, when companies fail to invest in AI safety and ethics, they unknowingly leave themselves wide open to attacks. That's why DeepMinds and OpenAI highlight the importance of investing in their safety and ethics.

#4: Lack of Clear Policies and Training: When a company lacks strong and clear policies for AI use and regular end-user training on AI's specific security risks, they open their doors to data leakage and prompt injections. Because even the most secure company could be compromised by an untrained or uninformed employee.

#5: Poor Security and Continuous Testing: Literally, AI risk assessment shouldn't be treated as a one-time thing. But many companies fail to conduct risk assessments continuously, leading to system vulnerabilities in which adversarial prompts and data manipulation can occur.

How Companies Should Prepare For 2026 Attacks 

Considering the rate at which the threat landscape is rapidly evolving, companies need to adopt a multilayered defense approach to closely match the kind of tumultuous attacks predicted to occur in 2026. And they are as follows:

#1 Prepare for Emerging Threats

No system can't be attacked. And yes, AI can attack an AI system. It's safer to prepare ahead by setting these three factors straight:

1. Develop an incident response plan for your company’s defense.
2. Conduct regular security training for employees. And trainers should focus on teaching employees how to treat AI agents as actors with their own identities and how to implement Identity and Access Management (IAM) control to prevent unauthorized access.
3. Educate the company C-Suites on AI-risk as a board-level issue.

#2 Develop a Comprehensive AI Policy and Procedure 

Companies should develop a policy and procedure for the secure and ethical use of AI within their organization. This policy includes defining a role for AI oversight, ensuring data privacy, and implementing access control for AI systems.

#3 Automate Security Hygiene and Adopt Continuous Monitoring

This is another way to prepare against AI attacks in 2026. By automating a routine task like vulnerability scanning, patch and configuration management reduces the window of attacks.  Moreover, intense monitoring of AI agent behaviour and interactions is an ideal way to track unusual activity that could indicate an attack.

#4 Have Red Team Test Weaknesses and Share Threat Intelligence

Considering the sophisticated nature of AI attacks on companies, it's advisable to have a Red team run a test simulation of AI attacks to identify weak centres. While it's much better for companies to find their weaknesses themselves than for attackers to discover their weak spots, having firsthand information on the latest AI threat from other external sources like ISACs (Information Sharing and Analysis Centre) is another way to prepare for AI attacks.