Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Ray Fernandez is a Buenos Aires-based journalist who covers enterprise Follow Author Aug 13, 2026, 11:32pm EDT --:-- / --:-- This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more . Summary Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are disproportionately targeted by cyberattacks, with AI-driven threats escalating exploitation times from months to hours. Over 80% of SMBs reported cybercrime, and 96% of ransomware attacks hit them, highlighting their vulnerability due to limited resources. However, agentic cybersecurity tools now offer a crucial defense. These AI agents automate security tasks, acting as an intelligence layer over existing tech stacks to accelerate threat detection, response, and decision-making. They can triage alerts, correlate signals, isolate compromised devices, and generate incident reports, providing capabilities previously exclusive to large enterprises. Experts advise SMBs to deploy these tools on critical public-facing assets first, ensuring human oversight and data privacy. This modernization is essential for SMBs to secure their entire digital surface, from back-end to employee devices, against the intensifying threat landscape.
AI concept in screen with young man getty SMBs from all industries are being hammered in today’s threat landscape. While headlines spotlight high-profile cyberattacks and sophisticated hacks, SMBs are the most impacted sector in cybersecurity. They face the same attacks large companies do, including increasing AI threats, but with far fewer resources.
In 2025, the Identity Theft Resource Center found that as threat actors embraced AI, more than 80% of small businesses reported a cybercrime. The trend showed no signs of deceleration in 2026. The 2026 Verizon DBIR noted that a shocking 96% of all ransomware attacks hit SMBs.
AI allows cybercriminals to reduce exploitation times from months to hours while scaling attacks to record-high levels. SMBs from all sectors are being targeted, including healthcare, agriculture, commerce, mining, logistics, energy, manufacturing, banking and fintech, software development and other industries.
While the cyberattack stats may be discouraging for SMB decision-makers, the advances made in agentic cybersecurity technologies can help them turn the trend around and protect their business.
In this report, executives, leaders and experts from HackerOne, 0rcus, Moonlock by Mac Paw and EC-Council guide SMBs on what agentic security tools can do, how they can deploy the tech safely and cost-efficiently and how SMBs can secure their digital surface, from front-end to workers' devices.
As AI accelerates the speed and volume of threats and attacks, agentic security tools are designed to help companies respond. Until recently, these technologies were only accessible to large, well-funded companies. However, today SMBs can access them through big tech platforms and other vendors at competitive prices.
There are a wide range of AI cybersecurity tools in the market for SMBs, including SentinelOne Singularity, Microsoft Defender for Business, Google Agentic SOC, GitHub Copilot Security and others developed by Amazon Web Services (AWS), CISCO, Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike, to name just some. Each agentic tool is developed for specific cases, whether it be securing software development pipelines, managing identities, keeping supply…