Across industries, organisations are racing to adopt AI to improve productivity, automate operations and unlock new business models. Yet the same technology is rapidly lowering the barriers for cyber-criminals, enabling them to launch attacks faster, at greater scale and with far less technical expertise than before.
The result is a widening security gap.
New research from Check Point’s 2026 Cyber Security Report suggests cyber-attacks against UK organisations rose 23 per cent last year. But the real story is not simply the increase in attacks. It is the speed at which the threat landscape itself is evolving.
Artificial intelligence is now embedded across the entire attack lifecycle. Criminal groups are using AI to scan networks for weaknesses, craft highly personalised phishing campaigns and even generate malicious code automatically. Operations that once required skilled hackers and significant time can now be executed quickly by smaller groups using widely available tools.
This shift is transforming cyber-crime into something closer to an industrialised activity.
At the same time, businesses are dramatically expanding their digital footprint. AI systems are being embedded across corporate workflows, cloud environments are growing rapidly and employees increasingly work across distributed devices and platforms. Each new layer of digital capability also introduces new exposure.
One of the clearest examples of this change can be seen in social engineering attacks. Rather than exploiting software vulnerabilities, attackers are increasingly targeting people. AI-generated voice impersonation, automated phishing campaigns and new techniques designed to manipulate employees into executing malicious commands themselves are becoming far more common.
The goal is simple: bypass security controls by exploiting human behaviour.
Meanwhile, the rapid adoption of enterprise AI is creating new governance challenges. Many organisations are still defining how AI systems should interact with internal data, external tools and third-party platforms. Without clear guardrails, AI deployments can unintentionally expose sensitive information or create new pathways into corporate environments.
Cyber-crime is also evolving economically. Ransomware groups are shifting away from large, centralised operations toward more decentralised networks of affiliates. Increasingly, attackers focus on stealing sensitive data and threatening to publish it rather than encrypting systems, a tactic that allows attacks to move faster and puts pressure on organisations to respond quickly.
These changes are occurring alongside a growing convergence between cyber-operations and geopolitical tensions. Attacks targeting infrastructure, government systems and strategic industries are increasingly timed around political developments, complicating attribution as criminal groups and state-aligned actors operate in overlapping ecosystems.
Taken together, these trends point to a fundamental shift in how cyber-risk should be understood.
For organisations across the UK and Europe, cyber-security is no longer just an IT issue. It has become a business resilience challenge that touches economic stability, operational continuity and national security.
Security leaders are increasingly recognising that defending organisations in an AI-driven economy requires a more integrated approach. Traditional perimeter-based security models were designed for a different era, when systems were centralised and threats evolved slowly. Today’s environments span cloud platforms, AI applications, distributed networks and remote workforces. As a result, many organisations are shifting toward prevention-first security architectures that protect networks, cloud environments, AI systems and employee workspaces as part of a unified strategy rather than separate security layers.
The challenge is particularly acute in an AI-driven economy. As organisations adopt AI to transform their operations, security must evolve at the same pace. Protecting networks alone is no longer sufficient. Businesses must now secure cloud environments, AI systems, employee workspaces and the expanding digital edge where many attacks now begin.
In other words, cyber-security must become part of how organisations design their digital future, not something added afterwards.
Artificial intelligence will continue to reshape both innovation and cyber-crime. The question is whether businesses can close the security gap quickly enough to keep pace.
Download the full Check Point 2026 Cyber Security Report here for detailed analysis of emerging threats, attacker tactics and strategic recommendations
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