How Hackers Are Using AI to Find Small Business Targets Faster Than Ever
Threat Intelligence AI Risk April 2026 · 8 min read The same AI revolution giving small businesses a productivity edge is giving cybercriminals one too — and the research from Microsoft, CrowdStrike, and Malwarebytes makes for uncomfortable reading. For most of the history of cybercrime, scale was the limiting factor. A skilled attacker could only do so much — research targets, craft convincing messages, find exploitable vulnerabilities — with human time and effort. Automation helped, but it was blunt. Mass phishing campaigns were obvious. Credential stuffing was noisy. The most damaging, targeted attacks required real expertise and real hours. That constraint is eroding fast. In 2025 and 2026, threat intelligence teams at some of the world's largest security companies have been publishing research that tells a consistent story: AI is making cyberattacks faster, more targeted, harder to detect, and — critic...