76% of UK organizations have faced deepfake attacks. Most weren’t ready

AI accelerating cyber threats beyond human response speeds

by · TechRadar

Opinion By Mike Riemer published 5 May 2026

(Image credit: Getty Images)

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Three-quarters of UK organizations have already been targeted by deepfake attacks, according to research. Not as a theoretical risk. Not as a tabletop exercise. As actual incidents — personalized phishing emails enhanced with AI-generated content, fraudulent voice and video designed to bypass human judgment.

According to recent industry research, only 40% feel very prepared to defend against the next one.

Mike Riemer

SVP for Ivanti.

Further, that pattern holds across every category of threat, not just deepfakes. Ransomware, compromised credentials, software vulnerabilities — perceived risk keeps climbing while preparedness falls further behind.

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For ransomware specifically, 63% of security professionals now rate it a high or critical threat for 2026, while just 30% say they're very prepared. The spread between perceived threat and preparedness is growing. It’s getting worse.

Clearly, something is going wrong. And it isn’t a small issue (in scale or in implications).

AI is compressing timelines

AI is compressing timelines When threat actors get hold of a security patch, AI tools let them reverse-engineer what vulnerability it fixed — and build a working exploit — in roughly 72 hours. That figure comes from what we're observing in practice, not from a lab.

It’s still the norm for organizations to run patch deployment processes built around weekly or monthly cycles. Test in dev. Schedule a maintenance window. Coordinate with business units. By the time a patch reaches production, the exploit may already be circulating.

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