BlockAPT rolls out AI cyber defence tool for financial services SMEs

BlockAPT has launched Pivotra AI Essential, an artificial intelligence-powered cyber defence product aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises in financial services. The company said the service is designed to monitor, assess and respond to cyber incidents for firms that face automated attacks but often lack large security operations teams or enterprise-level budgets.

The launch comes as smaller UK companies report elevated exposure to cyber risk. According to the UK’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/2026, cited by BlockAPT, 46% of small businesses and 65% of medium-sized businesses said they had experienced a cyber breach or attack in the previous 12 months.

BlockAPT said financial services SMEs are facing the same categories of machine-speed threats as larger institutions. The company identified phishing, business email compromise, malware, ransomware, suspicious network activity and risky login behaviour among the threats the product is intended to address.

Three-step deployment model

Pivotra AI Essential is built around what BlockAPT describes as a three-click model: Activate, Connect, Protect. The company said the aim is to provide an autonomous defence layer that can be used out of the box by smaller organisations.

In practice, BlockAPT said the platform draws signals from endpoint devices, email systems, identity tools, cloud services, web activity and network data. By combining those signals, the service is intended to detect risk across the organisation rather than within a single security channel.

The company said the product can monitor activity, triage alerts, contain incidents, carry out remediation steps and learn from past incidents. It said the AI component helps assess risk in real time and decide which response is appropriate, including blocking, quarantining, containment and remediation.

Autonomous cyber defence tools typically use software rules, behavioural signals and machine learning models to identify activity that differs from expected patterns. In BlockAPT’s description, Pivotra AI Essential applies this approach across multiple systems so that, for example, a suspicious login can be evaluated alongside email, endpoint and network behaviour before the system responds.

SME security gap

Stephen Hudson, chief executive of BlockAPT, said smaller companies are often left using security tools designed and priced for larger enterprises. He said Pivotra AI Essential gives smaller organisations access to autonomous cyber defences without needing a large security operations centre or enterprise pricing.

The company positioned the product for SMEs in the financial services sector, where firms may handle payments, customer data or regulated workflows while operating with narrower technology and security resources than larger banks and financial institutions.

BlockAPT did not disclose pricing, customer names or revenue targets in its announcement. The company also did not provide independent performance metrics for Pivotra AI Essential, such as detection rates, false-positive rates or response times.

This story draws on original reporting from Finextra Research.