AI is making cyber threats faster, but trust will define which businesses survive

A small business owner receives a call from a customer.

An email that appeared to come from the business led the customer to a fraudulent website, and their personal information may have been compromised.

What makes situations like this so damaging is that the owner never knew the risk existed.

The domain used in the attack had been registered for a campaign years earlier and left quietly active, sitting outside anyone's management, until someone else found a use for it.

CEO of Network Solutions Group, Bluehost Group.

Situations like this rarely begin with a major security breach. More often they start with something small: a forgotten domain, an outdated email configuration, or a digital asset nobody realized was still active.

AI makes finding those unnoticed weaknesses all too easy for attackers. According to KnowBe4's 2025 Phishing Threat Trends Report, 82.6% of phishing emails now show some use of AI, a 53.5% increase year-over-year. Attackers are adopting the same automation businesses use to improve efficiency, and the speed advantage has shifted. The good news is that businesses can use the same advances in AI to identify many of these risks before attackers do.

But the speed of detection is only part of the challenge. The harder problem is visibility. You can't secure what you don't know you own.

More and more, small businesses manage domain names, websites, email systems, social channels, and third-party tools, and as those layers expand, the gaps between ownership and oversight become easier to miss.

Forgotten domains are a common example. Domains created for promotions, campaigns, or discontinued services often stay active long after their purpose disappears. Left unmanaged, they become blind spots that attackers exploit through phishing, impersonation, and brand abuse, and they can quietly erode credibility well before any breach, since a domain that no longer resolves correctly signals neglect to customers and machines alike.

Simply put, many business owners no longer have a complete view of the digital assets they own or the vulnerabilities that come with them.

Small business owners are focused on serving customers, growing revenue, and running their businesses. They are not thinking about DNS records, certificate renewals, or dormant subdomains during their day. Nor should they have to.

But many do not have the option. According to VikingCloud's 2026 research, 84% of SMB owners manage cybersecurity themselves, often without dedicated training or expertise.

The most effective security strategies are built into the infrastructure which businesses depend on every day, rather than added after problems arise. There are three layers where this matters most: the domain, which serves as a business' identity online; the website, where customers form opinions about credibility and trustworthiness; and email, which remains one of the most important channels for customer communication and one of the most common targets for impersonation and fraud.

Embedding security into the solutions businesses already use helps them maintain visibility and confidence without constant manual oversight of all of those moving parts.

Today’s cybersecurity conversation always comes back to trust. That’s what SMBs want to win by securing their online business. It is the engine of their success.

We know that trust is one of the most important competitive advantages a business can have: according to McKinsey reporting on digital trust, 40% of consumers have completely pulled their business from a company after discovering the organization was reckless with customer data, and 10% of consumers will cut ties with a brand immediately upon learning of a data breach, regardless of whether their own personal information was actually compromised or stolen.

For years, trust online was primarily a human judgment. Customers visited a website, received an email, or interacted with a brand, and decided whether it appeared credible. Today they still make those decisions, but they are no longer the only ones making them.

Search engines, AI assistants, and automated systems increasingly evaluate trust signals on behalf of users. Roughly two-thirds of Google searches now end without a click, according to Similarweb clickstream data analyzed by SparkToro. Trust is no longer just a customer's perception; it is becoming part of how businesses get discovered.

Credibility is no longer determined solely by what customers see. Domain resolution, certificate validity, email authentication records, and the consistency of businesses’ online presence all feed into the assessments that influence search rankings, AI-generated recommendations, and discovery across the platforms customers use every day. A business that doesn’t deliver on these fronts may be overlooked long before a customer ever decides whether to trust it.

For decades, businesses viewed security as a defensive function, meant to reduce risk and respond to threats. That perspective is changing.

Trust and security now influence customer acquisition, retention, reputation, and long-term growth. In the AI era, trust is no longer just a security outcome. It is a business strategy. As AI accelerates both innovation and risk, customers have become more selective about who they engage with and where they share their information. Credibility is difficult to earn and almost impossible to buy back once lost.

At Network Solutions, we have spent decades helping businesses establish and protect their digital identities. One lesson remains consistent: investing in trust early creates advantages competitors struggle to replicate.

Businesses that stand out in the years ahead won't simply adopt more AI. They'll build trust into every layer of their digital presence. The business owner who took that call from a customer deserved a better security infrastructure, not a better incident response after the fact.

Technology will continue to evolve, and so will the threats. Trust will only become more valuable. The businesses that thrive won't simply adopt more AI; they'll build stronger foundations for trust. That's where our industry needs to go next.

This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit

CEO of Network Solutions Group, Bluehost Group.

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