**Abstract**

The malware can threaten personal privacy by opening backdoors for attackers to access user passwords, IP addresses, banking information, and other personal data, whilst some malware extracts personal data and sends them to people unknown to the users. In this chapter, the authors will present recent case studies and discuss the privacy and security threats associated with different types of malwares. The small medium enterprises (SMEs) have a unique working model forming the backbone of the UK economy and malware affects SMEs' organizations. Also, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as both an offense and defense mechanism, for the hacker, and the end user will be investigated further. In conclusion, finding a balance between IT expertise and the costs of products that are able to help SMEs protect and secure their data will benefit the SMEs by using a more intelligent controlled environment with applied machine learning techniques and not compromising on costs will be discussed.

**Keywords:** malware, privacy, cyber defense, ransomware, SME, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, GDPR
