National Cooperative Bank Blog: AI & Cybersecurity: A Double-Edged Sword
Like it or not, AI is here to stay. From scheduling assistants to algorithms that suggest personalized ad content, AI has been effortlessly integrated into our daily lives. Businesses across industry verticals have also recognized the benefits of AI and have rapidly adopted AI-driven solutions into their technology stacks. As the efficiencies afforded to us by AI are undeniable, so too are the impacts of AI on cybersecurity.
AI poses as much risk to cybersecurity as it does benefit. Both cyber attackers and cyber defenders are utilizing AI tools to bolster the speed, efficiency, and accuracy of their operations. A recent joint report from Microsoft and OpenAI identifies five nation-state-affiliated threat actors that are utilizing artificial intelligence to enhance their reconnaissance, technical skills, and tool kits, as well as their social engineering capabilities. In order to combat the emerging threats posed by AI, defenders must outpace attackers in the race to embrace AI.
In this blog, we will discuss how cyber attackers and cyber defenders benefit from the use of AI in cybersecurity, and how organizations must implement AI-driven cybersecurity solutions to keep up with the rapidly expanding threat landscape.
How Cyber Attackers Leverage AI
Attackers are utilizing both publicly available generative AI platforms and specially crafted, adversarial ("evil") AI platforms to improve their capabilities. These technologies have lowered the barrier to entry to enable hackers with minimal technical expertise to be successful. AI tools have also dramatically improved the quality of social engineering campaigns by nearly eliminating language barriers and grammar errors that assisted in scam identification.