In this episode of The Agentic Exec, Ian and George welcomes national security strategist Tom Burton (yes… Major Tom) to break down the uncomfortable truth: mid-market businesses are now prime targets for AI-powered cyber attacks.
Attackers aren’t guessing anymore.
They're scanning the entire internet, scraping your socials, cloning your voice, and deep faking your CFO to move £10M out of your account while you’re still on the Zoom call. The game has changed.
In this episode, we unpack:
Why SMEs and mid-market firms are now more vulnerable than the FTSE giants
How AI is supercharging spear-phishing, deepfake fraud, and social engineering
The brutal evolution of ransomware (including the new four-stage hostage playbook)
Why “shadow AI” inside your company may be a bigger risk than attackers outside it
Practical controls from the NCSC that can eliminate 90–95% of opportunistic attacks
How to govern autonomous and agentic AI systems before they drift into chaos
What boards, CEOs, and investors should look for to assess cyber readiness fast
The one question every chairman should ask: “Who is actually accountable for cyber risk here?”
This is a blunt, practical conversation for leaders who know AI is accelerating faster than their governance models — and want to avoid becoming tomorrow’s headline.
If you’re a CEO, investor, CISO, or operator trying to adopt AI safely and keep your business off the ransom blogs, this episode is essential.
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