The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has published a series of reports and articles on Frontier AI and what it means for cyber security. The message is clear that organisations should understand both the risks and the opportunities presented by AI, especially if they rely on digital systems.
What is Frontier AI?
The NCSC uses the term Frontier AI to describe the most advanced artificial intelligence models currently available. These systems can analyse large amounts of information, write software, solve complex problems and assist with tasks that previously required significant technical expertise.
Businesses are already using these capabilities to improve productivity. Software developers use AI to write code, marketing teams use it to generate content and organisations use it to automate repetitive work. But the same technology can also support cyber attacks. AI can help criminals generate convincing phishing emails, analyse publicly exposed systems, identify vulnerabilities and automate parts of an attack that once required far more time and effort.
AI is making cyber attacks faster
Cyber criminals are still exploiting many of the same weaknesses they have targeted for years. Weak passwords, missing security updates, exposed remote access and poorly secured Microsoft 365 environments remain common entry points. And AI allows attackers to find those weaknesses more efficiently.
The NCSC is clear that AI cannot independently carry out every stage of a sophisticated cyber attack today. The immediate risk is that it makes skilled attackers faster, more efficient and able to scale their activity more easily.
Instead of manually researching potential targets, they can automate reconnaissance, analyse thousands of internet facing systems and prioritise organisations that appear vulnerable.
The NCSC also highlights the growing importance of vulnerability discovery and exploitation. As AI helps attackers find and exploit weaknesses more quickly, organisations will have less time to apply security updates once vulnerabilities become known.
For businesses, this means vulnerabilities are likely to be discovered sooner than they were in the past. Delays in patching systems, removing unused accounts or reviewing access permissions leave less margin for error.
AI is also changing cyber defence
The same type of AI capability can also be used to improve cyber security. Security platforms increasingly use AI to analyse activity across Microsoft 365, email, user identities, endpoints and cloud services.
AI is looking for behaviour that doesn’t fit the normal pattern. For example, it can recognise:
- A user logging in from two different countries within a short period.
- An employee granting unexpected permissions to a Microsoft 365 application.
- Unusual email activity that could indicate a compromised account.
- Multiple low-level security events that are connected to the same incident.
Any one of those activities might have an innocent explanation. The point is that AI can spot when several of them are happening at once and flag it before anyone has had to go looking.
What this looks like in practice
This is the approach at the heart of the Secure360.io service. Many organisations are overwhelmed by the volume of security alerts they receive. By correlating activity across your environment, our platform filters out much of the noise, helping our team focus on the alerts that genuinely require investigation.
Rather than watching each part of your Microsoft 365 environment in isolation, the platform looks across email, identities, endpoints and cloud activity together because that’s where the patterns emerge.
But that doesn’t remove people from the process – alerts still require judgement. Our team reviews incidents, investigates unusual activity and provides practical advice on the most appropriate response. AI gives us greater visibility and faster detection. and human expertise provides the context needed to protect your business.
The fundamentals still apply
The NCSC’s guidance doesn’t suggest organisations need to abandon existing security practices in favour of AI. The controls that reduce risk today will continue to reduce risk tomorrow. Multi-factor authentication, patch management, secure Microsoft 365 configuration, endpoint protection and effective identity management remain the foundation of good cyber security.
What should SMEs think about?
Most SMEs don’t need to understand the technical detail behind Frontier AI. They do need confidence that someone is continuously monitoring their environment, identifying unusual behaviour and responding before a small security issue develops into a business disruption.
The businesses that manage this well won’t necessarily be the biggest or the best resourced. They’ll be the ones that have the basics in place and someone watching what’s happening while it’s happening and not after the fact.