Businesses of all sizes can be the target of cyberattacks. However, those with under 1,000 employees are disproportionally impacted by ransomware, according to Verizon’s 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report. These organisations face the same threats as larger enterprises without the same means to fight them. A blog from the US Office of Financial Research notes that mid-sized firms are “rich enough to lure attackers yet often lack the resources to mount robust defenses.”
Now AI is transforming the threat landscape. Usage of unauthorised genAI services – often called Shadow AI – has added new vulnerabilities. Meanwhile AI is empowering hackers to discover and exploit software weaknesses in minutes rather than days and brought sophisticated techniques within reach of a larger criminal userbase.
Working with data from Anthropic, Verizon discovered that hackers were seeking AI assistance for around 15 distinct techniques, often with a view to chaining together multiple stages of attack. In the near-future, malicious or corrupted AI agents could make these threats more effective and harder to detect.
These rapidly evolving AI-powered threats demand a different cybersecurity approach; one that still provides protection for devices and business data but also focuses on resilience and containment. While software-level malware detection, effective AI policies and user training can help businesses minimize their risks, building security and resilience into endpoint devices can be the best way to avoid downtime and significant financial loss.
A multilayered security approach
This starts at the fundamental hardware level, with features that protect the memory that loads the initial firmware, with secure authentication and rapid recovery of devices if they’re compromised. It continues with features that encrypt the data stored in RAM, plus credentials, identities and encryption keys, and ensure a hardware level root of trust. The security stack then builds on these foundations with endpoint protection features that can isolate a browser tab or an application window, so that a successful attack can’t spread, or provide a robust safeguard against malicious links, downloads and attachments. With those in place, a thoughtless click doesn’t lead to a full-scale ransomware infection.
HP’s business laptops and PCs support this by combining HP Wolf Security with the features of AMD Ryzen™ PRO and Ryzen™ AI PRO processors. AMD Secure Processor 2.0 technology enables the secure boot flow and system resilience, ensuring firmware and hardware integrity from the moment the system is switched on. AMD Memory Guard protects RAM from snooping and physical attacks, while AMD Shadow Stack protects against increasingly popular hacking techniques which exploit weaknesses in legitimate software. Meanwhile, HP Threat Containment and Sure Click Enterprise use advanced detection and hardware-enforced isolation to contain ransomware and malware without disrupting workflows.
What’s more, HP’s AMD Ryzen™ AI PRO devices provide more secure ways to utilise AI, including HP AI Companion – the world’s most advanced on-device AI assistant. Capable of analysing sensitive data through local AI processing, it gives end users a secure alternative to their cloud-based shadow AI tools.
To find out more about resilience in the AI era, visit https://www.hp.com/gb-en/workstations/zbook-ultra.html.