What’s the difference between AI security for SMBs and traditional cybersecurity?

AI security for SMBs differs from traditional cybersecurity in four critical ways:

1. Threat velocity—AI attacks scale infinitely with one criminal targeting 10,000 SMBs simultaneously versus traditional manual attacks
2. Attack sophistication—SMBs must defend against 98% accurate voice cloning, real-time adaptive phishing, and polymorphic malware that rewrites itself versus static threats
3. Supply chain risks—Small to medium-sized businesses require dependency scanning for hallucinated packages and software bill of materials (SBOM) maintenance that traditional cybersecurity didn’t emphasize
4. Governance requirements—SMBs needs policies for employee AI tool usage, shadow AI detection, and vendor AI practices, while traditional cybersecurity focused only on perimeter defense and antivirus.

Most critically, AI security for SMBs recognizes that 83% of SMBs face increased threats but traditional tools like basic antivirus (used by 68% of SMBs) are inadequate against AI-powered attacks.