Cyber threats are evolving faster than employee security training can keep up. Too many organisations still default to legacy training practices. Routine sessions, static slide decks, and simplistic phishing drills were designed for yesterday’s threats, not the AI-powered attacks emerging today. But today, relying on that as your primary defence exposes a risk that costs small businesses an average of $56,571 per cyber attack. That figure, according to the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), is up 14%, and for many SMEs, that kind of hit can mean closing their doors for good.

AI is now creating sophisticated phishing attempts, deepfakes, and hyper-realistic scams that make it genuinely challenging for even the sharpest employee to differentiate the real from the fake. The risk of trusting video conferencing, phone calls, or emails has never been higher. Your employees’ ability to spot the red flags is now a liability because traditional training instils a false sense of safety,  leading them to assume that any content they receive is safe.

Training teams on every possible way a cyberattack may look is unsustainable, especially as threats continue to evolve. Instead, security leaders need to establish and teach them what a strong cyber defence looks like. Building these internal structures and resilience will allow Australian SMEs to securely compete and grow in 2026.

Establishing one trusted channel

This strategy starts with clear rules. Every organisation needs to define and strictly enforce its single, approved communication channel for all company-critical announcements and requests. Having the appropriate security controls in place on the platform makes it very unlikely that a message is going to get posted by an attacker. Anything beyond these trusted channels is treated as untrusted.

The next step is making this principle part of daily operations. For example, critical instructions such as paying an invoice or transferring funds should only be trusted if they come through the approved channel. Any message received outside that channel must be treated as a potential threat. Maintaining strong controls over trusted channels and workflows is what ensures teams remain alert and protected against evolving AI threats.

Use AI to enforce the good

Instead of analysing every potential attack, employees should be trained to analyse the process. The most robust way to leverage AI defensively is to establish a verified path, so that it can identify where the approved process is not being followed. Fundamentally, AI should know the approved process, and then its job is to immediately identify and flag any deviation. This guardrail approach is superior because it eliminates the complexity of trying to track every malicious actor. If a request, even an AI-generated one, tries to bypass the required steps, the defensive AI detects the procedural violation.

However, this strategy relies entirely on your organisation's processes being precise, consistent, and fully documented. This means capturing not just formal documents, which are often out of date, but the owned knowledge. The low-level steps and nuances that teams know they need to do daily but are never written down. AI can’t access undocumented information and processes, so organisations need to integrate it with the systems employees already use, like visual collaboration tools that help accelerate the day-to-day and productivity. Only when the process is clearly defined can AI act as a reliable security enforcer, ensuring the organisation's mature processes remain resilient and protected.

Strategic AI investment and resilience

This commitment to precision in day-to-day processes and trusted channels should redefine your training and overall security strategy.  Enforcing trusted processes gives employees and AI a clear standard to follow. My advice for organisations wanting to adopt more AI is to start small. It's an investment, and the value will come from smaller use cases spread across the organisation, not one big, transformative number. 

For Australian SMEs, 2026 is an opportunity to focus on building intentional, process-driven resilience. By shifting your defence from trying to filter out the bad to defining and enforcing the good, you can secure your operations and compete confidently in a landscape that's only getting more challenging.