What is an AI-era threat?

An AI-era threat is any cyber risk amplified by AI. That could mean threat actors using AI to move faster, launch more convincing campaigns, automate reconnaissance, exploit vulnerabilities, or scale attacks across more targets. It also includes new risks created by an organization’s own AI use, such as exposed data, unmanaged AI tools, or AI agents acting in unexpected ways. AI-era threats require connected, AI-native cybersecurity that can understand context and respond before threats gain momentum.

How can organizations defend against AI-era threats?

To stop AI-era threats, organizations need more than AI features added to existing tools. They need a connected, AI-native cybersecurity defense system that can see across the environment, connect signals, and coordinate rapid response. Sophos Fusion unifies prevention, detection, investigation, and response across endpoints, networks, email, cloud, identity, security operations, and third-party tools, helping defenses operate as one against threats moving at AI speed and scale.

What is AI threat protection and why does it matter?

AI threat protection helps organizations defend against attacks that use AI to increase speed, scale, and scope. This includes more persuasive phishing, automated reconnaissance, adaptive malware, and scaled vulnerability exploitation. Effective AI threat protection requires connected control points, AI-native detection, threat intelligence, automation, and expert-led response. Sophos Fusion brings these capabilities together in one defense system, helping organizations identify suspicious activity earlier and respond before attacks cause disruption.

How does Sophos use AI to strengthen customers’ defenses?

Sophos embeds AI across its products, services, threat intelligence, and security operations to reduce exposure, stop threats faster, and help defenders work with greater confidence. Deep learning helps detect known and unknown attacks, while GenAI capabilities in Sophos XDR support analysts as they investigate cases, summarize detection data, interpret suspicious command-line activity, and search through security data using natural language. Combined with our AI-native defense system, all these use cases help organizations respond faster and defend more effectively.

How does Sophos detect, isolate, and eradicate AI-enabled cyberattacks?

Sophos responds to AI-enabled threats by uniting prevention, detection, investigation, and response in one system. Sophos Fusion brings together signals from endpoints, networks, email, cloud, identity, MDR, XDR, Firewall, Next-Gen SIEM, and more, helping defenders see the full context of an attack and coordinate response across the environment. AI helps identify suspicious behavior, prioritize detections, summarize cases, interpret command-line activity, and accelerate investigation, while Sophos MDR analysts provide expert oversight when human judgement is needed. Confirmed threats can be contained and removed quickly, helping organizations stop attacks before they spread or cause disruption.

What makes AI-native cybersecurity different from traditional cybersecurity?

Traditional and even “modern” cybersecurity have relied on separate tools, platformization, static rules, and manual investigation. AI-native cybersecurity is built to learn from large volumes of security data, recognize patterns, and support faster decisions across the security lifecycle. With Sophos Fusion, for example, AI-native cybersecurity operates through a single, open architecture where products, services, integrations, threat intelligence, automation, and human expertise work together. This strengthens the system as it grows.

How does a connected cybersecurity defense system improve cyber resilience?

A connected cybersecurity defense system like Sophos Fusion enables your security tools, data, and expert insight to work together instead of operating in isolation. Unifying disconnected touchpoints and compounding intelligence links malicious indicators, streamlines complex decision processing, and triggers a faster, more targeted response. Sophos Fusion connects protection, detection, investigation, and response across Sophos and third-party technologies, with 500+ integrations. This enables teams with better visibility, deeper context, and a more coordinated response effort. Intelligence from 625,000+ customers further strengthens protection as the system learns from every threat, analyst decision, and outcome.

How does Sophos help organizations securely adopt AI?

Sophos enables organizations to adopt AI securely by giving them visibility and control over how AI is used across their environment. Sophos AI Defense helps discover sanctioned and unsanctioned AI tools, assess risk based on identity, permissions, behavior, and data exposure, and enforce guardrails across prompts, uploads, AI interactions, and agent activity. It also feeds AI-related activity into Sophos XDR and MDR workflows, helping teams reduce data exposure and manage AI risk without adding complexity.

Why do organizations need both AI security and AI threat protection?

Organizations need AI threat protection to defend against threat actors using AI, and AI security to protect their own use of AI. One addresses external threats. The other reduces risk from internal AI adoption. Sophos Fusion brings both together in one connected defense system, helping organizations stop AI-era attacks while securing the users, data, applications, agents, and workflows involved in AI-driven innovation.

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Cyber Defense for the AI Era

Defeat AI-enhanced threats and securely adopt AI with confidence.

With a decade of innovation in AI-native cybersecurity, Sophos delivers AI threat protection built for the realities of modern defense and enables secure AI adoption. Withstand cyberattacks that are faster, broader, and more complex than ever before. Move beyond AI hype and plug into the world’s most complete cybersecurity defense system.

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SOPHOS AI-NATIVE CYBER DEFENSE

Where AI becomes real security value.

Make AI your security advantage with solutions that strengthen your cyber resilience, shield you from evolving threats, and secure every stage of your AI transformation.

Deploy AI-native defenses

AI for Security

Upgrade your security for the AI Era with the world’s most complete AI-native cybersecurity defense System and largest agentic SOC.

Stop AI-Era
threats

Security from AI

Protect every touchpoint in your environment through one unified system across EDR, XDR, MDR, Firewall, Next-Gen SIEM, Email, and more.

Securely adopt
AI

Security for AI

Safely deploy and monitor AI solutions. Control access and restrict data movement to accelerate innovation while managing your risk exposure.

Sophos Fusion: the world’s most complete AI-native cybersecurity defense system

To beat threats moving faster than defenders can respond, you need a new system. Sophos Fusion is that system, protecting organizations from the speed, scale, and scope of AI-enabled attacks. Built on the Sophos AI-Native Cybersecurity Defense System architecture, it sees everything, connects everything, and unifies your defenses to respond together.

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A single, open-by-design architecture where everything operates as one, and intelligence is compounded.

Deliver a coordinated response against AI-era threats. Each new product and integration expands the Sophos Fusion system, accelerating outcomes while reducing overhead. The system doesn’t just get bigger over time. It gets smarter.

The most complete defense system, combining the strongest control points on the market.

Security outcomes start with the inputs. Sophos Fusion brings together all your control points, including Sophos’ world-leading EDR, XDR, MDR, Firewall, Email, AI Defense, Next-Gen SIEM, and more. With 500+ third-party integrations, no one else offers comparable breadth or depth.

Agentic autonomy with human judgment enables machine-speed decisions and expert-governed outcomes.

Sophos Fusion can detect, investigate, and respond without waiting for human input. It does so within parameters defined and continuously calibrated by our MDR analysts, ensuring specialists own the trust boundary for every action.

Plug into the world’s largest agentic SOC

Where agentic AI and human expertise become a force multiplier.

Protect your organization with cyber defense that continuously learns and adapts. Sophos consolidates agentic AI with human intelligence to detect novel behaviors, validate complex decisions, and respond to sophisticated threats with a speed and effectiveness neither could achieve alone.

89 seconds from case creation to fully automated response. AI enables a faster response and stronger resilience against attacks that move at machine speed.
52% of MDR cases closed end-to-end by AI without human intervention required, inside boundaries continuously calibrated by our analysts.
625,000+ organizations, from SMBs to global enterprises, benefitting from intelligence that compounds across every threat, analyst decision, and response outcome.

Proven AI Expertise

Sophos has been pushing the boundaries of AI-enabled cybersecurity for more than 10 years. We are now trusted by 625,000+ organizations globally to keep them safe in the AI Era.

Pioneering deep learning-based protection against unknown malware since 2016
Developing Sophos Fusion, the world’s most complete AI-native cybersecurity defense system
Contributing frontline threat intelligence and expertise to Anthropic's Project Glasswing initiative
Joining the OpenAI Daybreak Cyber Partner Program to enhance cyber defense with Frontier AI
Providing Sophos AI Assistants to channel the expertise of our MDR specialists into our customers’ hands

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The Problem We’re Solving

AI is reshaping the cyber risk landscape — from how attacks are launched to how organizations are targeted and defenses must be deployed. Sophos continues to develop solutions and services ready to meet these new demands.

AI Speed

AI is accelerating the development of malicious tradecraft, vulnerability exploitation, and the pace of change within organizations and supply chains.

AI Scale

AI enables threat actors to launch more attacks against more targets, amplifying risk and impact across complex interconnected environments.

AI Scope

AI lowers the barrier to entry for threat actors while increasing the systems, tools, users, and data defenders must secure.

AI Hype

Inflated AI claims and the false promise of platformization make it harder to separate real security value from marketing noise.

We understand the enemy

Sophos X-Ops researchers are continuously studying how threat actors use AI to accelerate attacks and how AI systems themselves can be targeted. By investigating these emerging trends, techniques, and influences, we gain the insight needed to stay ahead in a rapidly changing threat landscape. Those findings also feed directly into the Sophos Defense System, strengthening the intelligence, detections, and response efforts we deliver to customers every day.

Navigate the evolving AI threat landscape

From AI-assisted phishing and reconnaissance to attacks targeting AI agents and LLMs, Sophos X-Ops track how threats are evolving and what defenders need to do next.

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The strongest control points on the market

Sophos Endpoint

A unified Endpoint Protection and EDR solution built to defeat AI threats by blocking the techniques at the heart of attacks launched by both humans and Agentic AI tools. Powerful anti-ransomware, behavioral threat detection, exploit prevention, adaptive defenses, and threat surface reduction capabilities disable attacks before they cause harm.

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Sophos MDR

Fully managed, 24/7 detection and response for the agentic era. AI handles speed and scale. Humans provide judgment and accountability. Sophos MDR offers the world's largest Agentic SOC — AI investigates and responds in seconds while analysts own the outcomes, countering AI-driven attacks at machine speed, around the clock.

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Sophos Firewall

In the AI era, “Secure by Design” is the only real way to keep your network secure. Sophos Firewall is the most secure and hardened firewall on the market, with unique features like automated patching, configuration health check, and remote integrity monitoring. It’s a firewall that withstands modern attacks, by design.

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Sophos Email

Includes 20+ AI and machine learning (ML) models that operate across multiple layers to detect the widest range of email-based threats. These models are continuously enriched with real-world threat intelligence from Sophos X-Ops, ensuring they adapt to evasive and AI-generated email attacks before impact occurs.

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Sophos XDR

Extended detection and response (XDR) that gives you security operations and compliance for the agentic era. AI tools and automation flatten the learning curve, eliminate fatigue, and drive more efficient detection, investigation, and response so analysts can do more, faster, and with confidence, helping you outpace attacks without adding unnecessary complexity.

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Sophos AI Defense

Sophos AI Defense helps you understand and control how AI is used across your environment by delivering visibility, policy enforcement, and operational response through existing security controls. Sophos AI Defense extends browser, endpoint, network, and MDR capabilities into a unified approach that enables you to discover AI activity, assess risk in context, enforce guardrails, and address threats.

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Frequently Asked Questions

An AI-era threat is any cyber risk amplified by AI. That could mean threat actors using AI to move faster, launch more convincing campaigns, automate reconnaissance, exploit vulnerabilities, or scale attacks across more targets. It also includes new risks created by an organization’s own AI use, such as exposed data, unmanaged AI tools, or AI agents acting in unexpected ways. AI-era threats require connected, AI-native cybersecurity that can understand context and respond before threats gain momentum.
To stop AI-era threats, organizations need more than AI features added to existing tools. They need a connected, AI-native cybersecurity defense system that can see across the environment, connect signals, and coordinate rapid response. Sophos Fusion unifies prevention, detection, investigation, and response across endpoints, networks, email, cloud, identity, security operations, and third-party tools, helping defenses operate as one against threats moving at AI speed and scale.
AI threat protection helps organizations defend against attacks that use AI to increase speed, scale, and scope. This includes more persuasive phishing, automated reconnaissance, adaptive malware, and scaled vulnerability exploitation. Effective AI threat protection requires connected control points, AI-native detection, threat intelligence, automation, and expert-led response. Sophos Fusion brings these capabilities together in one defense system, helping organizations identify suspicious activity earlier and respond before attacks cause disruption.
Sophos embeds AI across its products, services, threat intelligence, and security operations to reduce exposure, stop threats faster, and help defenders work with greater confidence. Deep learning helps detect known and unknown attacks, while GenAI capabilities in Sophos XDR support analysts as they investigate cases, summarize detection data, interpret suspicious command-line activity, and search through security data using natural language. Combined with our AI-native defense system, all these use cases help organizations respond faster and defend more effectively.
Sophos responds to AI-enabled threats by uniting prevention, detection, investigation, and response in one system. Sophos Fusion brings together signals from endpoints, networks, email, cloud, identity, MDR, XDR, Firewall, Next-Gen SIEM, and more, helping defenders see the full context of an attack and coordinate response across the environment. AI helps identify suspicious behavior, prioritize detections, summarize cases, interpret command-line activity, and accelerate investigation, while Sophos MDR analysts provide expert oversight when human judgement is needed. Confirmed threats can be contained and removed quickly, helping organizations stop attacks before they spread or cause disruption.
Traditional and even “modern” cybersecurity have relied on separate tools, platformization, static rules, and manual investigation. AI-native cybersecurity is built to learn from large volumes of security data, recognize patterns, and support faster decisions across the security lifecycle. With Sophos Fusion, for example, AI-native cybersecurity operates through a single, open architecture where products, services, integrations, threat intelligence, automation, and human expertise work together. This strengthens the system as it grows.
A connected cybersecurity defense system like Sophos Fusion enables your security tools, data, and expert insight to work together instead of operating in isolation. Unifying disconnected touchpoints and compounding intelligence links malicious indicators, streamlines complex decision processing, and triggers a faster, more targeted response. Sophos Fusion connects protection, detection, investigation, and response across Sophos and third-party technologies, with 500+ integrations. This enables teams with better visibility, deeper context, and a more coordinated response effort. Intelligence from 625,000+ customers further strengthens protection as the system learns from every threat, analyst decision, and outcome.
Sophos enables organizations to adopt AI securely by giving them visibility and control over how AI is used across their environment. Sophos AI Defense helps discover sanctioned and unsanctioned AI tools, assess risk based on identity, permissions, behavior, and data exposure, and enforce guardrails across prompts, uploads, AI interactions, and agent activity. It also feeds AI-related activity into Sophos XDR and MDR workflows, helping teams reduce data exposure and manage AI risk without adding complexity.
Organizations need AI threat protection to defend against threat actors using AI, and AI security to protect their own use of AI. One addresses external threats. The other reduces risk from internal AI adoption. Sophos Fusion brings both together in one connected defense system, helping organizations stop AI-era attacks while securing the users, data, applications, agents, and workflows involved in AI-driven innovation.

Speak with our team

Now is the time to get ahead of AI era threats. Wherever you are on your AI-native defense journey, we can help.

Defend against AI-era threats

Find out how we can help you detect faster-moving attacks, connect signals across your environment, and respond before threats gain momentum.

Secure your AI adoption

Get guidance on protecting users, data, applications, and AI tools so your organization can innovate with confidence and control.

Build on your existing security investments

Connect the Sophos and third-party tools you already use to strengthen resilience, reduce complexity, and improve response across your environment.