Everyone is talking about the acceleration in artificial intelligence technology and usage. As businesses look for ways to use AI to improve performance and reduce costs, some are jumping in without considering privacy concerns and cybersafety issues.
Cybercriminals are making use of AI tools to make scamming businesses even easier. They are using AI to create better, more believable phishing emails; create malware code, which can bring your system down; and spread misinformation that can damage your company and its reputation.
On the flip side, AI is being used to protect against these cyberattacks with continuous vulnerability scanning and patching, threat detection and automated incident response.
In a recent survey of chief information security officers (CISOs), 70% believe AI helps attackers more than defenders, yet 35% are already experimenting with AI-generated cyberdefenses. In the study, 61% of CISOs said they will likely use some type of AI defender in the next 12 months, with 86% believing generative AI will alleviate security skills gaps and talent shortages in the future.
AI-Assisted Cybercrime
Cybercriminals have made good use of AI in advancing their methods. Using generative AI technology, threat actors can create and deploy attacks more quickly and on a much larger scale. Cybersecurity experts have identified several ways criminals are using AI:
- Creating better phishing campaigns
Before AI, phishing messages were easy to spot with abundant spelling and grammar mistakes. AI-generated copy is much improved and harder to identify. AI can also customize every phishing email, making them unique to the recipient and harder for spam filters to catch. Chatbots can also create and manage large-scale phishing attacks in multiple languages simultaneously.
- Generating adaptive malware
AI can generate new computer code quickly and adapt it to various targets. This AI-informed attack can specifically target its victims and their systems and make adjustments and updates in real time. These attacks are more difficult to detect as they can mirror legitimate user behavior, preventing security systems from noticing them.
- Spreading misinformation
Companies spend millions to build their brand images—images that need to be protected. AI-generated misinformation can tarnish a reputation and send a stock plummeting. Some studies claim that AI-generated copy is even more believable than content created by humans. AI technology allows anyone to create erroneous, even damaging content that appears legitimate.
AI Defending Against Cyberattacks
Just like the plot line from a Marvel superhero movie, AI is being used to battle AI. While the threat of AI-generated cyberattacks is growing, so is the response. Cybersecurity experts are using AI in multiple ways as a defense against high-tech attacks:
- Continuous vulnerability scanning
As AI allows cyber criminals to exponentially scale their attacks, it’s also helping IT security teams to defend against them. AI is being used to identify real-time threats and attacks on networks, while assessing and identifying system vulnerabilities. AI is capable of reviewing a large amount of data in a short period of time and detecting anomalies that could signal a cyberattack.
- Automated patching
AI-generated automated patch management tools keep your security systems up to date and operating at maximum efficiency. These tools regularly scan and test your system to find vulnerabilities and deploy updates and patches in real time, closing any holes that may be used to access your system. Automated patching frees up IT teams, allowing them to use their skills on more complicated issues.
- Faster threat detection
As cyberattacks increase in sophistication and frequency, system defenses must do the same. By analyzing a computer network and establishing a baseline of normal activity, AI can more quickly detect unusual behaviors, suspicious patterns, and other outliers. It continuously searches for threats and can detect them in real time, making response times almost immediate. It’s suggested that in the next three years, AI threat detectors will reduce the rate of false-positive threats alerts by nearly 30%.
- Automated incident response
AI continuously monitors networks and computer systems, looking for irregularities that could indicate a cyberattack is occurring. Using generative learning, AI can use applied cybersecurity guidelines to identify threats and resolve them before they cause problems in the system. AI can also collect data across the entire network, review and prioritize threats, and provide IT teams with urgent alerts.
You can be sure that as AI technology advances, some will use it as a tool to scam and steal while others will use it to create better and more extensive shields against these criminal attacks. As business owners, we must remain vigilant in our cybersecurity practices and stay up to date on the latest threats to keep our data safe.
Jeff Chandler is CEO of Louisville-based Z-JAK Technologies and author of “Hacked! What You Must Know Now to Protect Your Business Financials, Customer Data, and Reputation from Cybercriminals.”
