Understanding AI Cybersecurity for SMBs: Here’s What You Need to Know in 2025

Quick Look: AI cybersecurity for SMBs

• AI cybersecurity is an approach that integrates artificial intelligence with cybersecurity to protect a business’s data, networks, and systems from cyberattacks.
• Using AI for cybersecurity can mitigate cyber threats and provide a host of benefits, including real-time data protection and autonomous response

Fun fact: AI is expected to contribute $16 trillion to the global economy in 2030. Businesses (big and small) from various industries use it to analyze data, draw insights, and generate forecasts.

As more organizations use AI and data to power their strategies, their IT teams must strengthen the security of their systems and networks. After all, cybercriminals also have access to AI tools that can scale and automate their jobs.

The good news is that you can use AI to protect your business’s data and systems.

How? Enter AI cybersecurity, a unique approach that uses AI for protecting your data, systems, and networks.

Let’s break down what AI cybersecurity is and how you can use it to mitigate risks with these topics:

• What is AI cybersecurity?
• The benefits of AI cybersecurity
• 5 uses of AI in cybersecurity
• 3 AI cybersecurity tools

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What is AI cybersecurity?

AI cybersecurity is an approach that integrates artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP) with cybersecurity to protect businesses’ data, networks, and systems from cyberattacks.

Using advanced algorithms and real-time data analysis, AI cybersecurity can learn from past cyber threats, anticipate new ones, and respond accordingly. As a result, it provides businesses with real-time protection by:

• Identifying suspicious activities (like several incorrect login attempts)
• Analyzing potential threats
• Automating safeguard measures

 🎥Video: Website Security Tips to Protect Your Business

The benefits of AI cybersecurity

AI for cybersecurity provides several benefits for businesses. AI cybersecurity can offer you the following:

• Real-time data protection and autonomous response
• Solid business reputation
• A proactive approach to preventing cyber threats
• Increased efficiency
• Scalability

Let’s discuss each benefit:

Real-time data protection and autonomous response

Did you know that it takes an average of 197 days to identify a breach? That’s almost half a year of going undetected!

With AI cybersecurity solutions, you protect your data (including your customer’s private information) with real-time monitoring and protection. AI cybersecurity can identify suspicious activities and automatically notify your team about potentially unauthorized data access.

AI cybersecurity can also identify shadow data, which is data that’s copied, stored, and not formally managed by the team or business that owns it. As a result, companies immediately detect issues and can spur into action.

This is especially useful for businesses that store and process customer data for digital marketing and personalization efforts.

Solid business reputation

How would you feel about a business that values your privacy and safeguards your personal information? Personally, I’d feel at ease transacting with that company and sharing my contact information.

That’s why when businesses go the extra mile to protect their systems and customer data, they’ll likely earn their customers’ trust. The result? They get to retain their customers and build a solid reputation.

A proactive approach to preventing cyber threats

Think of AI for cybersecurity as a car’s active safety feature. An example of such a car feature is an automatic emergency braking system, which can identify a possible collision and autonomously brake to reduce the impact of — or even avoid — a collision.

AI and machine learning algorithms analyze present data while processing learnings from past data to identify patterns and potential cyberattacks. Predictive AI for cybersecurity can predict cyberattacks and proactively respond to defend your systems, networks, and data. As a result, businesses can minimize — or possibly avoid — a threat’s impact.

Increased efficiency

AI can process vast amounts of data and analyze heavy network traffic. By letting AI for cybersecurity take care of data processing and analysis, it can quickly identify problems and your team members can resolve these issues faster.

As a result, your team members have more time to focus on strategic tasks, thus improving your efficiency.

Scalability

Your business’s cybersecurity needs will grow as your business grows. AI cybersecurity can scale as your business expands. It typically does so without requiring additional investments in hardware or new team members.

As a result, your security needs are still met.

5 uses of AI in cybersecurity

Now that you know the benefits of AI cybersecurity, let’s go through its different applications:

• Malware detection and prevention: Machine learning detects new and evolving malware that can perform unauthorized actions on your data. By identifying malicious software in real-time, AI cybersecurity can prevent its attack or minimize its damage.
• Identifying and prioritizing cyber threats: Statista reported that 52,000 new common IT security vulnerabilities were discovered in 2024. Machine learning algorithms can track and prioritize vulnerabilities in specific niches, while AI models can fix them accordingly. IBM, Microsoft, and Google have been developing their own AI systems for cybersecurity: IBM Security, Microsoft Cyber Signals, and Google Play Protect, respectively.
• Automated response to a potential cyberattack: AI can automate actions against potential threats it has detected. By immediately springing into action, AI minimizes or prevents the damage of a cyberattack.
• Predictive analysis of risks: By analyzing vast amounts of data, AI can recognize patterns and predict emerging attacks. Security teams can then proactively defend systems and networks before an attack happens.
• Defense against AI-powered attacks: The bad news is that cyber threats like phishing and malware are now more sophisticated because of AI. The good news is that SMBs can use AI as a defensive tool. AI for cybersecurity can analyze large amounts of data and identify patterns from malicious content.

3 AI cybersecurity tools

Now that you know the benefits of AI cybersecurity and its uses, let’s go through the different AI cybersecurity tools your organization can use:

1. Cybereason Defense Platform
2. Darktrace Respond
3. Vectra

Let’s go through each one:

1. Cybereason Defense Platform

Cybereason’s platform predicts, understands, and responds to malicious operations to secure your business’s assets.

It provides endpoint protection, meaning it defends end users’ devices, such as computers and mobile phones, from threats. Cybereason Defense Platform uses machine learning to identify malware and ransomware attacks.

2. Darktrace Respond

Darktrace Respond is designed to stop in-progress ransomware attacks.

It uses Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI, which provides real-time visibility into your systems. Once it detects a threat, Darktrace Respond automatically contains and disarms it.

3. Vectra AI Platform

Vectra’s AI-powered platform detects and responds to network threats in real-time. It prioritizes threats by correlating, scoring, and ranking incidents according to urgency. Vectra AI Platform also distinguishes between benign and malicious activities by understanding your business environment.

Leverage AI for cybersecurity to protect your data and systems

Using AI for cybersecurity is the proactive approach to protecting your networks and data, as well as reducing the impact of attacks on your business. If you need to team up with a digital marketing agency that takes security seriously, consider WebFX.

We’re a full-service digital marketing agency with over 29 years of experience. In addition, we’re no stranger to AI — our growth platform, RevenueCloudFX, has features powered by IBM Watson.

Our website security analysis services can protect your customer data and brand. Plus, you can rest assured that our team’s efforts are focused on helping you grow your business.

Contact us online or call us at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our digital marketing services!