ESET, the leading company in proactive threat detection, announced a €40 million investment in the future of AI-driven cybersecurity, as the company warns of a rapidly emerging new attack surface fueled by autonomous, agency-enabled AI systems.

The commitment — announced by ESET CEO Richard Marko at ESET World 2026 — comes in response to a shift ESET has observed in its own data. Since March 2026, ESET technologies have analyzed nearly 800,000 unique AI skills (modular components that instruct AI agents on how to perform tasks, use tools, access services, and interact with external systems). Approximately 25,000 of these skills were classified as suspicious, and more than 3,000 were blocked for being malicious.

This total represents a 13-fold increase compared to the approximately 60,000 publicly available skills observed earlier this year. According to ESET’s research team, AI skills are part of a rapidly growing layer in the software supply chain, often connecting sensitive systems to external repositories, plugins, datasets, and third-party services.

“Cybersecurity is entering a completely new era,” said Richard Marko, CEO of ESET. “Artificial intelligence is no longer just a defensive tool. It is becoming part of the attack surface itself. Our investment is focused on ensuring that AI strengthens cybersecurity rather than weakening it, and on developing technologies capable of protecting organizations in a world of autonomous AI.”

The initiative aims to strengthen ESET’s technological independence and European sovereignty in cybersecurity at a time when access to advanced artificial intelligence systems is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small number of global technology companies. “We believe that the future of cybersecurity cannot depend entirely on models controlled by large technology companies,” added Marko.

“In cybersecurity, sovereignty matters”

Backed by a three-year recruitment plan that will grow ESET’s R&D team to 1,000 dedicated research and engineering professionals, the €40 million investment will focus on three strategic areas:

• Independent, security-priority core AI models
• A comprehensive, layered AI security architecture
• The next-generation AI SOC

“ESET has long been at the forefront of applying AI to cybersecurity,” said Juraj Jánošík, Vice President of Artificial Intelligence at ESET. “What is changing now is the role that AI plays.” AI tools are becoming part of everyday work, autonomous systems are expanding the attack surface, and security teams need faster ways to respond to threats. This investment allows us to work across the spectrum: protecting the use of AI, building AI models for cybersecurity, and incorporating autonomous capabilities into security operations under human supervision.”

Standard, security-priority AI models

ESET will accelerate the development of its own security-centric AI models, designed specifically for cybersecurity applications. Unlike general-purpose AI systems trained on broad internet content, ESET’s models will be optimized using cybersecurity telemetry and real-world threat intelligence gathered over ESET’s nearly 35-year history.

The company will continue to expand its existing AI-powered technologies (such as ESET LiveGrid, ESET LiveCortex, and ESET LiveGuard) while exploring emerging AI concepts, including “World Models” capable of understanding behavior, context, and intent within digital environments.

Design, development, and implementation of a comprehensive, layered AI security architecture

As AI becomes more integrated into everyday business operations, ESET is developing a comprehensive, AI-native security architecture designed to protect organizations against emerging AI-driven risks and threats. The investment will include the development of ESET Secure AI Relay, a secure intermediary layer between users, AI agents, business applications, and AI models.

The leading cybersecurity company will also develop network-level safeguards and protections for communication between AI agents. ESET AI Skills Checker (a free tool launched at the RSAC 2026 conference), along with its enhanced versions integrated into ESET products, was specifically designed for this emerging ecosystem of agent-based AI systems.

Building the Next Generation AI SOC

A new generation of AI-powered Security Operations Center (SOC) technologies will be designed to address the increasing scale and complexity of modern detection and response environments. Instead of simply replacing analysts with AI agents, ESET aims to fundamentally rethink how cybersecurity telemetry is processed, correlated, and understood. The company’s vision is to make advanced AI-powered cybersecurity accessible not only to large enterprises but also to small and medium-sized organizations through supervised and highly automated protection technologies.

“Cybersecurity cannot grow simply by adding more alerts, more dashboards, and more complexity,” added Marko. “The industry needs to take another major leap forward. We believe that artificial intelligence should help make world-class cybersecurity simple and accessible to everyone.”

To learn more about ESET solutions, visit: https://www.eset.com/latam/empresas/protect-platform/ and/or simply https://www.eset.com/latam/

ESET invites you to delve deeper into cybersecurity by visiting: https://www.welivesecurity.com/es/.

For useful preventative information and details on services and products, visit https://www.eset.com/ve/ and their social media channels @eset_ve. You can also find them on Instagram (@esetla) and Facebook (ESET).

Information and images courtesy of ESET and Comstat Rowland Strategic Communications

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Interaction with chatbots (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity, among others) has come to be treated as an intimate and secure space. Emotional, psychological, work-related, and medical concerns are entrusted to them. ESET, a leading company in proactive threat detection, analyzes what type of information is typically shared with AI chatbots, how it could be exposed, and what the real impact of a leak could be. Furthermore, they share digital best practices for continuing to use these tools without putting oneself at risk.

“It’s not new that many people use chatbots as if they were private spaces. Using them in this way contradicts the nature of these tools, since the platforms themselves emphasize that conversations can be stored, analyzed, or reviewed to improve the service. Chatbots were not designed as a confidential space, even though the conversational experience might lead one to think otherwise. While the main AI platforms claim to implement security and privacy measures (access controls, monitoring, infrastructure protection), this does not eliminate the risk of data breaches, nor is it synonymous with invulnerability,” highlights Martina Lopez, Cybersecurity Researcher at ESET Latin America.

When using them as personal assistants or even advisors, personal and sensitive information is often shared almost without realizing it. This includes:

• Personal data. Sensitive information such as name, age, city, and country, but also daily habits: where you work, who you live with, and your family composition. This information, combined and in the wrong hands, can be dangerous.
• Work-related information. Driven by the need to “Help me improve this,” many users share internal emails, contracts, reports, presentations, business strategies, campaigns, customer and supplier details, conversations, and support tickets. They also share source code and internal architectures.
• Medical, psychological, or emotional consultations. Chatbots are also perceived by many people as advisors or specialists (a practice that can be dangerous). Health-related issues are shared, such as symptoms, diagnoses, and medications, as well as personal matters like relationship conflicts, grief, questions they wouldn’t ask on other social media platforms, or requests for advice.
• Opinions, beliefs, and sensitive stances. Chatbots receive opinions from users with political or religious ideologies, views on companies, bosses, or colleagues, and also information that, taken out of context, can cause reputational damage.

“The problem isn’t what’s shared, but rather that false sense of intimacy and privacy, which can be shattered very easily. Months of conversations build a profile that can be extremely valuable to a cyberattacker,” adds Lopez from ESET.

The information shared with AI chatbots can be exposed and fall into the hands of cybercriminals for various reasons. The main one is if someone gains access to the account. This can happen by accessing the password, falling victim to a phishing attack, or using the same password for multiple services. Another reason is manipulated chatbots, which can be tricked with malicious prompts by cybercriminals to obtain user information. Furthermore, accepting terms and conditions without reading them is another risk, since chatbots collect and store usage information, such as history and conversations, to train their language model by default. It’s also important to consider potential security breaches, platform errors that expose user conversations and history, or if an extension or app is monitoring too much. For example, if a plugin is installed to enhance the chatbot’s capabilities and that app malfunctions, is vulnerable, or is malicious, the conversation could slip out of the main provider’s control.

The 5 key risks associated with a chatbot leak, according to ESET

1. Identity theft / Social engineering: Chatbot conversations provide human context. Cyberattackers can thus obtain information about habits, interests, routines, services used, problems that transcend these, and even the tone of voice used. This allows for much more personalized attacks, through emails or messages that appear to be written by someone familiar, scams that include real-life details, or identity theft that is much harder to detect.
2. Corporate espionage: Since many users rely on chatbots for work support, attackers can obtain confidential information such as strategies, documents, internal decisions, customer information, and pricing and/or product details. Beyond the legal risks this situation may entail, it can also represent a competitive advantage for third parties or the breach of certain contractual obligations.
3. Reputational damage: If private opinions, professional doubts, or intimate thoughts are exposed, the consequences can range from workplace conflicts to a loss of professional credibility.
4. Exposure of sensitive data: These types of chatbots are also used as a space for intimate consultations and often contain personal information such as symptoms, diagnoses, treatments, religious or political beliefs, and personal or family conflicts. If this information were leaked, the impact on the victim could be devastating: stigmatization, discrimination, and even emotional distress.
5. Extortion: When a cyberattacker has access to private information, they can exert pressure through credible threats and personalized blackmail. The goal? To obtain some kind of financial gain from the victim.

A good way to reduce the impact of exposed conversations is to adopt best practices when interacting with these chatbots. A highly useful preventative checklist

• Do not share personal data (ID number, date of birth, email, phone number) is ESET’s top recommendation.
• Anonymize real-life situations (change names, companies, locations).
• Do not attach sensitive documents, confidential information, or credentials.
• Review privacy settings (what is saved, what is used for training).
• Protect your account with a strong password and two-factor authentication.
• Use different accounts for work and personal use.
• Ask yourself: Would I say this out loud in a room with strangers?

“The comfort of a fluid, natural, and unjudged conversation makes us lower our guard and share information we would never publish in any other digital space. A leak of conversations exposes not only information but also routines, vulnerabilities, decisions, and emotions. However, this scenario should be taken as an invitation to understand what these platforms are and what they are not. They are not confidential spaces, personal advisors, or vaults of sensitive information. They are powerful tools, but like all technology, they require discretion, boundaries, and responsible digital habits,” concludes the ESET researcher.

ESET invites you to learn more about cybersecurity by visiting: https://www.welivesecurity.com/es/.

For other useful preventative information, also available in Venezuela:  https://www.eset.com/ve/, and on their social media channels @eset_ve. Also on Instagram (@esetla) and Facebook (ESET).

Information and image provided by ESET and Comstat Rowland

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It’s no surprise that Artificial Intelligence has revolutionized the world, and that cybercriminals have taken advantage of all this potential to create highly realistic and sophisticated targeted social engineering attacks. Techniques involving voice cloning to impersonate family members, friends, or acquaintances are on the rise, with the aim of obtaining private information or even money from their victims. ESET, a leading company in proactive threat detection, analyzes the methodology used by attackers in these types of scams, how they can affect people, and how we should avoid becoming victims.

Cybercriminals take small fragments of a real recording and, using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and voice patterns, create conversations and phrases to carry out their deceptions, with consequences that are as serious as they are costly. These samples are obtained from voice recordings or videos posted on social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok.

To measure the impact, the United States Federal Trade Commission reported that in 2023, the United States lost $2.7 billion due to scams alone. Along these lines, Starling Bank (a British online bank) warned about the prevalence of these types of scams in the United Kingdom. The survey of more than 3,000 people revealed that more than a quarter of adults say they have been the victim of an AI voice cloning scam at least once a year. Furthermore, 46 % of respondents stated they were unaware such scams existed.

The growing number of scams involving Artificial Intelligence led the FBI to issue a statement warning people: “Attackers are leveraging AI to create highly convincing voice or video messages and emails to enable fraud schemes against individuals and businesses alike. These sophisticated tactics can result in devastating financial losses, reputational damage, and the compromise of sensitive data,” the US investigative agency noted.

ESET recommendations

ESET warns that when faced with these types of scams involving social engineering, the first advice is to remain highly alert. This means paying special attention to unexpected messages that urgently request money or account credentials. Similarly, call back a family member or friend using a known phone number.

Another measure suggested by the ESET research team is to have a “safe phrase,” agreed upon in advance by family and friends, to verify whether the person on the other end of the line is who they claim to be.

It’s also very important to implement multifactor authentication whenever possible. It’s about adding an extra layer of security to prevent cybercriminals from accessing our accounts and systems.

“For companies, beyond combining solutions to reduce the number of phishing emails, calls, and messages that reach their employees, it’s essential to educate and raise awareness among their teams so they can detect scams and avoid falling into the trap,” commented Camilo Gutiérrez Amaya, Head of the ESET Latin America Research Lab.

Contact information for ESET, a digital and IT security specialist and source of this information and recommendations: https://www.eset.com/ve/.

Also available on social media: Instagram (@esetla) and Facebook: (ESET).

With information and reference images provided by ESET and Comstat Rowland

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Today, IT infrastructure, platforms and software are more likely to be offered as a service in a traditional on-premises setup. This is very attractive to small and medium-sized companies (SMEs), when compared to the majority, since it allows them to compete on equal terms with larger rivals, with more business agility and rapid scalability, without excessive investment. Thus, ESET, a leading company in proactive threat detection, warns that digital transformation also entails risks regardless of the size of the company and shares key security tips to take into account to avoid errors.

“53 % of SMBs surveyed in a recent report say they spend more than $1.2 million annually on the cloud, up from 38 % last year. Furthermore, security (72 %) and regulatory compliance (71 %) are the second and third most cited challenges by the SMEs surveyed. The first step in addressing these challenges is to understand the top mistakes smaller businesses make with their cloud deployments. In any case, these are not just mistakes that SMEs make in the cloud, larger companies with more resources are sometimes guilty of forgetting the essential ones. By eliminating these blind spots, your organization can take great steps towards optimizing its use of the cloud, without exposing itself to potentially serious financial or reputational risks”, comments Camilo Gutiérrez Amaya, head of the ESET Latin America Research Laboratory.

The 7 main cloud security mistakes that SMEs (and not so SMEs) make, according to ESET

1. No multifactor authentication (MFA): Static passwords are inherently insecure, and not all companies follow a strong password creation policy. Passwords can be stolen in several ways, such as phishing, brute force methods, or simply guessing. That is why it is necessary to add another layer of authentication (two-key or two-factor). MFA will make it much more difficult for attackers to access applications in your users’ SaaS, IaaS, or PaaS accounts, mitigating the risk of ransomware, data theft, and other potential outcomes. Another option is to switch to alternative authentication methods, such as authentication without password, whenever possible.
2. Placing too much trust in the cloud provider: Many IT managers believe that investing in the cloud effectively means outsourcing everything to a trusted third party. This is only partly true: there is a shared responsibility model between the provider and the customer, for securing the cloud. The type of service – SaaS, IaaS or PaaS – will determine what should be taken into account. While most of the responsibility falls on the provider, it is worth investing in additional third-party controls.
3. Not making backups: Never assume that the cloud service provider (for example, for file storage/sharing services) has your back. You should think about the worst case scenario: a system failure or a cyberattack on your provider. It’s not just data loss what will impact your organization, but also the downtime and hit to productivity that could follow an incident.
4. Not patching regularly: If you don’t patch, you expose your cloud systems to vulnerability exploitation. This, in turn, could lead to malware infections, data leaks, and much more. Patch management is a security best practice that is as important in the cloud as it is in other systems.
5. Cloud disruption: Cloud service providers are an innovative bunch, but the sheer volume of new features and capabilities they release in response to customer feedback can end up creating an incredibly complex cloud environment for many SMEs. This makes it more difficult to know which configuration is the most secure. The most common mistakes are configuring cloud storage so that any third party can access it and not blocking open ports.
6. Failing to monitor cloud traffic: Rapid detection and response are critical if signals are to be detected early, to contain an attack before it has a chance to impact the organization. This makes continuous supervision essential. It is worth thinking that it is not a question of “whether” the cloud environment will be breached, but “when”.
7. Don’t encrypt your company’s crown jewels: No environment is 100 % breach-proof. So what happens if a bad actor manages to access your most sensitive internal data or highly regulated employee/customer personal information? Encrypting them at rest and in transit will ensure that they cannot be used even if they are obtained.

Experts advise

From ESET, they assure that the first step to address these security risks in the cloud is to understand what the responsibilities are and what areas the provider will be in charge of. It’s a matter of deciding whether to rely on cloud-native security controls or to enhance them with additional third-party products. Therefore, they advise the following:

• Invest in third-party security solutions to improve cloud security and protection of email, storage and collaboration applications. In addition to the security features built into cloud services offered by leading service providers in the world cloud
• Add extended or managed detection and response (XDR/MDR) tools to drive rapid incident response and breach containment/remediation
• Develop and implement an ongoing risk-based patching program based on strong asset management (i.e. knowing what cloud assets you have and ensuring they are always up-to-date)
• Encrypt data at rest (at the database level) and in transit to ensure its protection. This will also require effective and continuous data detection and classification
• Define a clear access control policy; require strong passwords, MFA, principles of the least privilege, and IP-based restrictions/allow access lists for specific IPs
• Consider adopting a zero trust approach, which will incorporate many of the above elements (MFA, XDR, encryption) along with network segmentation and other controls

“Many of the measures above are the same best practices that one would expect to deploy in on-premise systems as well, with some details that will be different. The most important thing is to remember that cloud security is not only the responsibility of the provider and that control must be taken to prevent cyber risks” concludes Gutiérrez Amaya from ESET.

For more details on computer security, you can visit the ESET portal: https://www.welivesecurity.com/es/

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The leading company in proactive threat detection, ESET, conducted a thorough analysis of the most common scam modalities detected on the Facebook Marketplace over the course of the year. This report details the crucial signals that users should pay attention to in order to identify and avoid falling into the traps of cybercriminals.

Under the direction of Camilo Gutiérrez Amaya, Head of the Research Laboratory at ESET Latin America, the growing appeal of Marketplace as an online shopping and sales platform has attracted the attention of cybercriminals, resulting in an increase in scams and deceptions on this platform.

• Defective Items: Sellers post products with misleading photos, presenting them in perfect condition, but deliver damaged products, especially problematic in electronic items.
• Fake Items: Cases of counterfeit goods, such as designer clothes, perfumes, jewelry, and cosmetics, are common. Tempting offers are often an indicator of possible deception.
• Google Voice Scams: They take advantage of Marketplace to commit fraud on other platforms, requesting verification codes to steal Google Voice accounts.
• Overpayment: Scammers pretend to be buyers who claim to have overpaid and request a refund of the difference, without actually making any payment.
• Never Arrive Purchase: Sellers receive payment but do not deliver the item, applicable to items shipped from outside the buyer’s local area.
• Phishing and Fake Sweepstakes: Scammers use phishing emails with fake offers and sweepstakes to get personal information from victims.
• Insurance Scam: They pretend to be buyers willing to pay for shipping, but ask the seller for a small fee for an insurance assumption.
• Misleading Offers: Advertise high-quality products at tempting prices, then inform the buyer that the product is no longer available, offering more expensive alternatives.

ESET tips for detecting scams on Facebook Marketplace

• Inspect Items Personally: Purchase only from local sellers and review items prior to transaction.
• Meeting in Safe Places: Establish as meeting point public places, well lit and preferably during the day.
• Review Buyer/Seller Profiles: Know profile ratings and be alert to newly created profiles.
• Check Market Prices: Be suspicious if there is a large difference between the selling price and the market price, as it could indicate forgery, theft or defects.
• Caution with Offers and Gifts: Avoid providing personal data to access offers and gifts.
• Use Trusted Payment Methods: Use secure payment methods through Facebook Messenger, such as PayPal and Facebook Checkout.
• Keep Conversations on Facebook: Avoid moving the conversation to other platforms where it’s easier to scam people.
• Do Not Send Items Before Payment: If you are a seller, do not send products before receiving payment.
• Monitor Price Changes: Be on the lookout for unexpected changes in the agreed price.
• Do Not Share Verification Codes: Avoid sharing verification codes with potential buyers.

It is advisable to denounce or report

In case of suspected fraud, ESET advises to report the vendor and immediately report the incident to the Facebook Marketplace. Gutiérrez Amaya underlines the importance of adopting good security practices to prevent problems when surfing and shopping online.

With information and image provided by ESET and Comstat Rowland

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