In September 2026, ESET researchers found bad actors intentionally tripping AI-safety guardrails with a nuclear weapon prompt—a novel technique named GuardBreaker that is designed to interfere with AI-assisted malware analysis. Each day, there are new examples of attackers using or manipulating AI to move faster, automate more, and exploit smaller gaps with greater impact than before.
As businesses look to drive AI productivity in the workplace—deploying new AI models, agents, and skills across the business—it’s creating new threat vectors for the company to protect. For example, earlier in 2026, ESET analyzed nearly 900,000 AI skills – and identified 25,000 suspicious and 3,000 outright malicious instances.
In-house IT teams face increasing operational pressure as they work to defend an ever-expanding attack surface spanning traditional endpoints, cloud infrastructure, remote access, and digital services. Then add operational AI solutions and the demand to monitor cybersecurity tools around the clock, with near real-time signal interpretation and expert triage/response capabilities. Staffing these 24×7 security operations continues to be a challenge, especially given the ongoing talent shortages in cybersecurity. In ESET’s 2026 SMB Cyber Readiness Index, 76% of U.S. respondents agreed that AI use in the workplace introduced additional security risks.
Finally, there are growing existential threats to business continuity. In the same Index, U.S. businesses ranked data loss, financial impacts, and operational disruption as their top concerns from a potential cyber-attack. Advanced extortion-ware can quickly cripple operations, imperiling finances, compliance, reputation, and stakeholder trust.
Bridging The Risk/Capability Gap
SMBs, notably, face the same cyber threats as enterprises but lack comparable defensive capacity. These businesses have restrictive budgets and thin security expertise, relying on standalone tools and in many instances overextended IT generalists.
This capability gap inflates risk, impedes incident response, and increases potential for a disastrous outcome. With the average global cost of a data breach now at a record high $4.99 million, the consequences of failure can be brutal.
The combination of AI making attackers more proficient and increased compliance accountability has turned a “good enough” cybersecurity posture into a looming liability. This is exactly the area where many SMBs fight to gain traction. They need enterprise-grade cybersecurity but cannot field an enterprise-scale team to run it. Companies require a new approach that cost-effectively and demonstrably manages cyber risk 24×7—even from AI-guided threats.
Effortless Cybersecurity-as-a-Service
The newly launched ESET PROTECT portfolio is bringing effortless cybersecurity-as-a-service to businesses of every size, with 24×7 monitoring, automated threat containment, and new AI security features, plus direct access to expert support—all without the in-house overhead.
The new all-in-one portfolio secures AI use with a cutting-edge AI security stack, reduces security operations effort, trains staff to identify threats, and proactively addresses business risk to improve resilience. A tiered offering structure lets firms choose the right level of expert oversight and guidance to match their needs.
ESET’s approach is designed around supervised, proactive protection—simplifying cybersecurity overseen by ESET threat experts—and provides prevention-first security without requiring companies to assemble, manage, and decipher a complex security stack on their own.
Democratizing Cyber Insurance
Along with democratizing MDR, ESET PROTECT streamlines the process of qualifying for cyber insurance, a high bar for many SMBs. The new portfolio offers the full spectrum of technical controls that underwriters increasingly require as coverage prerequisites.
These controls include endpoint protection, MDR or SIEM monitoring, MFA, immutable backups, AES-256 encryption, regulatory compliance, security awareness training, wire-transfer verification procedures, and patching and known vulnerability fixes within 60 days.
Companies that qualify for cyber insurance enjoy more robust cybersecurity in addition to financial risk transfer through their policy. Better cybersecurity typically enables better incident response, further reducing potential damage from ransomware and other attacks.
That is a substantial “side benefit” in an environment where the average malware incident now costs $660,000.
Human Oversight: The Essential Layer Of AI Security
With cybersecurity becoming more complex and difficult to navigate, customers need solutions that are easier to implement, backed by expert supervision, better aligned to AI-era risk, and directly connected to operational continuity. Automation shortens detection and response times, minimizing damage and reducing analyst overload and burnout.
ESET has threat hunters in 11 R&D centers around the world whose proprietary telemetry and decades of institutional knowledge help turn emerging threat insights into actionable protection. Through thoughtful AI innovation—built and overseen in house—ESET differentiates itself by combining long-term human expertise with AI-powered detection to stay ahead of evolving threats.
The new ESET PROTECT portfolio reflects our long-term commitment to closing the AI security gap and ensuring that security remains central to AI innovation. By combining advanced AI capabilities with expert human oversight, we can help businesses achieve faster, more reliable protection while preserving critical judgement. This evolution represents a major shift from endpoint-led protection to a cybersecurity-as-a-service model built to optimize how organizations buy, operate, and experience cybersecurity.
