Kaseya Report Highlights Impact of AI on Cybersecurity Threat Landscape

Kaseya, a provider of AI-powered IT management and cybersecurity software, released today the 2026 Kaseya INKY Email Security Report, which shows that 2025 was an inflection point where AI reshaped both attacks and defensive strategy.“In the past year, AI-generated phishing became the baseline,” said Dave Baggett, SVP, security suite, Kaseya. “Attackers can now produce highly convincing messages at scale, which means the traditional signals security tools relied on for years-bad grammar, suspicious domains, obvious links-are disappearing. Defenders now have to evaluate intent and context, not just indicators.”

Phishing remains the primary attack vector for bad actors, with 26% of all cybercrime complaints filed with the FBI being phishing-related and $2.8 billion in reported Business Email Compromise losses alone. These threats often target Small and Mid-Sized Businesses (SMBs) more than the large enterprises which dominate headlines, with 82% of ransomware attacks targeting organizations with less than 1,000 employees.

Of the more than 4.5 billion emails INKY processed in 2025, 281 unique brands were impersonated. While cybercriminals have often relied on copying well-known brands to build trust, AI-generated layouts have allowed impersonators to more closely resemble a legit email from top financial institutions and retail brands.

But AI doesn’t only help attackers – INKY expanded their GenAI-driven detection models, intent-based labeling, multi-label classification and computer vision-based contextual understanding capabilities over the course of 2025 to address these concerns. With attackers expanding to phishing using calendar invitations, protected documents and callback phone numbers, these protections become increasingly important.

To learn more, download the 2026 Kaseya INKY Email Security Report here.