Brian Gutreuter

Ransomware attacks used to follow a simple script: criminals encrypted your files, demanded payment for the key to unlock them, and if you paid your data was restored. For SMBs with solid backups, that often meant skipping the payment and getting back online quickly. Those days are mostly gone.

AI burst onto the scene with ChatGPT in a big way in November 2022, in 64 days it became the fastest adopted application in history, with over 100,000,000 users, shattering all previous records. Fast forward three years to November 2025 and we see that 80% of the Fortune 500 has integrated ChatGPT into their workflows. Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella stated in a blog post titled “Looking Ahead to 2026” that AI has entered what he calls a period of “widespread diffusion.”

Every company uses third party support organizations to operate their business, from office cleaning to sophisticated financial and operations management platforms. In our global and connected world these risks have increased in both frequency and severity. According to the Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), “the percentages of breaches where a third party was involved doubled, going from 15% to 30%.”