Community Engagement Meeting – May 2026

Artificial intelligence is reshaping cyber security on both sides of the equation. Adversaries are using AI to accelerate attack development, craft more convincing social engineering, and automate reconnaissance at a scale previously impossible for all but the most sophisticated threat actors. At the same time, defenders are harnessing AI to detect threats faster, reduce analyst fatigue, and close the resource gap — particularly in the SMB market where skilled headcount is hardest to retain.

This webinar brings together a CrowdStrike specialist MSSP and a CrowdStrike technical expert to explore what the AI arms race actually looks like in practice, what SMBs and mid-market organisations should prioritise right now, and how the next generation of security tooling is changing the calculus for resource-constrained teams.

Topics to Be Covered

1. AI as an Offensive Weapon
– How threat actors are using large language models to generate phishing content, malware variants, and social engineering scripts at scale
– AI-accelerated vulnerability research: from discovery to exploit in compressed timeframes
– Deepfake audio and video as a vector for business email compromise and identity fraud
– The democratisation of sophisticated attack tooling — and what it means when script-kiddies have AI
– Nation-state actors and their use of AI to enhance persistence, evasion, and lateral movement

2. AI as a Defensive Tool
– How AI-native platforms like CrowdStrike Falcon detect threats in real time by correlating telemetry at scale
– Behavioural analytics and anomaly detection: moving beyond signature-based approaches
– AI-assisted triage: reducing mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR)
– Charlotte AI and the role of conversational AI in the SOC — accelerating analyst workflows
– How MSSPs leverage AI tooling to extend defence capacity without expanding headcount

3. The SMB and Mid-Market Challenge
– Why SMBs are disproportionately targeted — and disproportionately under-resourced
– The cyber skills shortage and how AI changes the calculus for smaller security teams
– Supply chain risk: how attackers compromise large organisations via their smaller partners
– What the UK Cyber Security Breaches Survey tells us about AI-era exposure for SMBs
– Practical steps organisations without dedicated security staff can take today

4. Building the Right Security Posture for an AI World
– Platform vs point solution: why consolidation matters when threats evolve faster than tools
– The role of managed services in delivering AI-powered defence to organisations that can’t build it themselves
– How to evaluate AI security claims — separating genuine capability from marketing noise
– Incident response in the age of AI: faster attacks demand faster containment
– Frameworks and practical guidance: NCSC, CISA, and CrowdStrike’s own adversary intelligence

5. Looking Ahead: The Next 12 Months
– Autonomous agents as both an attack vector and a defensive capability
– AI regulation in the UK and EU — and what it means for how organisations manage AI risk
– The evolving attacker economy: AI-as-a-Service on the dark web
– Where the industry is investing and what that signals for defenders

Speakers

Tom Exelby — Head of Cybersecurity, Red Helix / OxCyber Ambassador
Tom leads cybersecurity at Red Helix, where he is responsible for product strategy, partner programme development, and GTM across the firm’s CrowdStrike-managed service portfolio. He brings a practitioner’s perspective on how AI-driven threats are landing in the UK SMB market and what organisations at varying levels of security maturity should prioritise. As an OxCyber Ambassador, Tom is a regular contributor to the community’s thought leadership programme.

James Jenkins — CrowdStrike
James Jenkins represents CrowdStrike’s technical and commercial expertise, with direct visibility into how the Falcon platform is being used to counter evolving, AI-enabled threats across customer environments. His contribution will ground the discussion in the operational reality of what defenders are seeing — and what the tooling is capable of — right now.

Who Should Attend
This webinar is designed for:
– IT managers and senior leaders in SMB and mid-market organisations responsible for security decisions
– CISOs and security professionals looking for a grounded, practitioner-led view on AI and cyber risk
– Business leaders (CFOs, COOs, CEOs) seeking to understand AI-era risk exposure and investment priorities
– OxCyber members and the wider Oxfordshire technology and security community
– Security consultants and advisors supporting clients through AI-driven threat uplift

Key Takeaways for Attendees
– A clear-eyed view of how AI is changing the threat landscape — with specific examples, not abstractions
– Practical guidance on the defensive technologies and approaches that are making a material difference
– An understanding of what ‘good’ looks like for SMBs and mid-market organisations facing AI-accelerated threats
– Direct insight from CrowdStrike into how one of the world’s leading security platforms is evolving to meet these challenges
– A framework for evaluating your own security posture in light of AI-era risks

Register here: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/b54d29ef-fb5b-47e9-b023-509908046235@158e39a1-001c-44f0-90d6-35872708c845

The future is digital, and OxCyber is leading the way!

We look forward to having you attend the event!